


Bad Banker

by 7PercentSolution



Series: Fallen Angel [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: !IdiotSherlock, Banking isn't boring, Bells, Case Fic, City of London - Freeform, Gen, Grumpy John, Pre-Reichenbach, Secret Intelligence Service | MI6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-06-06 03:36:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 29,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6736468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7PercentSolution/pseuds/7PercentSolution
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The second of the cases mentioned at the start of the Reichenbach broadcast episode, this is the backstory about that kidnapped banker. Expect complicated case fic, and Sherlock trying to keep John at a distance whilst dealing a blow to Moriarty's ego.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

John stood hunched over the bank machine. He held his right hand over the keyboard to shield the pin numbers his left hand was punching in, feeling a little self-conscious about it. He was off for a date, meeting a pretty agency nurse he'd met at the clinic, and needed to refill his wallet because, yet again, he'd run out of cash. _Sherlock never needs to go to an ATM; he's got me._

At this time of night, the doctor was always careful to look behind him before he did any transactions on the street. Call him old fashioned, but one couldn't be too careful.

**_Please wait. Card details being checked_ **

He'd heard stories about people being mugged at a hole in the wall. He figured he could hold his own against most of the common-or-garden variety muggers, but he was also a tad paranoid about someone trying to clone his card, or steal a pin number without him even being aware of it. The same mentality meant he steadfastly refused to do online banking. Especially when Sherlock demonstrated just how easy it was to steal someone's bank passwords when the person was using WiFi.

**_What service do you require?_ **

There were six options. He pressed the key marked  _R **equest current balance on screen**_ **.**

A moment later, up came a figure that tallied with the balance he kept in his cheque book. He was meticulous about recording every standing order, every direct debit, and keeping his expenses under control- even when Sherlock blithely left him carrying the bulk of the food bills and the taxi costs. Once a month, a payment was made from Sherlock's account into John's which more than covered the outgoings, so he couldn't really complain. The issue was one of cash flow. The balance on the screen showed that Sherlock's most recent payment had cleared.

**_Do you require any other services?_ **

He hit the  ** _Cash with receipt_**  key.

The screen lit up with a new message.

**_Card retained. Please see your bank manager for details._ **

For the next ten seconds, the air turned blue. John seriously hoped that the video camera trained on the screen also captured audio, because he really wasn't standing for this.

After a string of swear words, he managed to splutter "Tell me how I get a hold of the guy at this hour of the night? Hmm? Just how am I supposed to do that? Anyway, you keep telling me there's no such thing as a 'bank manager' anymore; you're all 'customer relationship managers'. And, just in case you hadn't noticed, your sodding branch is  _closed_. So this customer has been given an effing poor relationship, because you've eaten my card, after telling me that I have more than enough cleared funds to cover this withdrawal. So, just what are you playing at?"

The ATM ignored him and replaced the screen with the words

**_Welcome to Barclays Bank. Please insert your card to begin._ **

John was just about to tell the machine that he couldn't sodding well do that because the effing machine had  _eaten_  his card, when a couple came along the pavement and stopped behind him.

"Uh, sorry, but, um…are you done, coz I'd like to get some cash out." The bloke looked a little wary at the sight of a man shouting at the ATM.

John turned and tried to get his temper under control. "Well, I hope you have better luck than I did, because the thing just ate my card after telling me I had more than enough in the account."

The girl on the bloke's arm just rolled her eyes and sighed. "Well, we'll just have to the use the machine around the corner then." And the pair walked off, leaving a seething doctor behind to glare yet again at the machine that had betrayed him.

oOo

"Have you seen this?" John's indignation was clear. He and Sherlock were sitting at the table in the living room, eating breakfast and reading papers.

"Hmm?" His flatmate's response came from behind the pages of the Financial Times. John recognised it as the  _I-hear-you-John-but-can't-be-bothered-to-really-pay-attention_  voice.

"The CEO of Barclays Bank has just announced that it has made a  _loss_  of two point five billion pounds but that the bankers are still sharing out a bonus pool of one point three billion. How is that even remotely possible?"

Sherlock ruffled the pages of his pink paper, but didn't lower them to look at John. A disembodied baritone drifted out from behind the newspaper, "They kitchen-sinked the accounts this year. Once they knew they weren't going to make a big profit, they crystalised everything that had the potential to lose them money. Take the hit on the share price this year, and it will be back to business as usual next year. In fact, the more loss they rack up this year, the higher the rise will appear next year. The bonus pool is only half what it was last year. And in any case, think of bonuses as just a capital cost of doing business."

John's outrage made his voice rise in volume. "By definition, you are supposed to  _earn_  a bonus. It's discretionary. If you deliver poor service and don't earn revenues, then how the hell can you justify being paid a bonus?"

"Without a good bonus, the good staff just go elsewhere. The banks can't afford to lose the people who do earn the profits, just because a few bad deals went wrong." There was a sigh. "You are still annoyed about last night. Why do you persist in picking fights with chip and pin machines, John?"

"This time, the bank screwed up. It kind of ruined my reputation last night, when I had to get my date to pay the bill at the restaurant because the sodding machine had eaten my card. They owe me an apology and compensation. If only so I can wave it in front of Helen's face so she stops thinking of me as a cheapskate. All I want them to do is give me my money when I want it. Why is that so much to ask?"

Sherlock folded the paper, and gave John a bemused smile. "You don't know much about banking, do you?"

The doctor's mood was not improving. "Don't tell me you're on the side of the banks?  _Nobody_  is on the side of the banks, except greedy bankers!"

Sherlock picked up his tea cup and sat back in his chair. He smirked. "Well, let's see. First of all, it isn't  _your_  money. You voluntarily gave it to the bank in exchange for the privilege of being able to access money at any time day or night, to have your cheques processed, your bills paid, your payments debited on the right day to the right people, without you having to deliver wads of cash halfway around the world if your creditor isn't within convenient walking distance of Baker Street. Besides, it's safer in a bank than under your mattress, especially given the appallingly low clear up rate for domestic burglary. You get all of those bank services for free, and so long as your account manages to reach a certain level, you might even expect to be paid interest on it. Free-if-in-credit banking is in a loss leader. No bank in the UK makes money on a current account; it costs them to run the service you just expect for free. In a lot of countries, you have to  _pay_  a bank to look after your money."

He took a sip of tea. "And then there is the reason  _why_  the banks can afford to give away this service for free. That's because your retail branch banking is paid for by the investment banking done in the wholesale side of the business. It's a cross subsidy. They keep a totally unfeasibly large retail service staffed by tens of thousands of people who are available to you six days a week because the work of a much smaller number of people in the wholesale markets makes a lot of money."

"But why do they pay themselves bonuses, when the bank makes a loss? I don't get that; it seems so unfair."

"You don't argue when a football star makes zillions."

"That's different. A goal scorer is an individual who wins a match."

Sherlock shrugged. "It's exactly the same premise. When a single trader can earn the bank millions of pounds in profits in a single afternoon, then it makes sense to pay him a lot. But the average salary of a retail bank staff member is £14,000 a year. Not exactly something to complain about. You make more as a part-time locum than a full time bank teller does."

The comparison annoyed John. "I  _save lives_. I don't push deposit slips around and put ten pound notes into machines that don't work when they are supposed to work." John tapped the folded up newspaper beside his tea cup. "And I'm not the only one who thinks the bankers are greedy so-and-sos. The Government has just announced a review of bank competition. That'll serve the bastards right."

Sherlock snorted. "Doubt it. It's just pandering to populist feelings. Bank bashing is a national past time. How old were you when you opened your account at your current bank?"

John looked a little confused. "Um…my mum set it up for me when I was fifteen."

"And that's my point. You are more likely to get divorced than you are to change your bank. They rely on your inertia, because ninety-nine percent of the time, you just take them for granted."

John crossed his arms. "Well, I'm not married, so I'm not likely to get divorced, am I?" He knew he was sounding a bit petulant. "And after last night's fiasco, I'm not likely to be getting married anytime soon. My date was not amused by my poverty."

"Just borrow my card; you know the PIN as well as I do. Then you can collect your card at the branch at lunchtime."

Sherlock got up and found his wallet on the coffee table, plucked the card out and handed it over to the doctor.

"You won't need this until tonight?"

"No. I'm just waiting for a delivery."

John's face must have betrayed his curiosity.

"I'm expecting a new case any moment now."

John collected his jacket, slipped the debit card into his own wallet, and slurped the last bit of tea down. "Well, I'm on until six. Don't do anything crazy in the meantime."

Sherlock sighed. "Why do people keep saying things like that? I'm not  _crazy_  and I don't do  _crazy_  things."

John rolled his eyes. "I'll remember that the next time I have to explain to Mrs Hudson why you decided that setting off an explosion of flammable gases in the kitchen was a particularly  _uncrazy_  thing to do."

Sherlock sniffed. "It was for a case. And I got the ceiling re-painted. If you're going to be nasty about it, then maybe I'll just do this one on my own."

"No. Unless it's art, I'd like to get my oar in on this case. I'm feeling in the need of a little distraction these days, given the effect your bloody bankers have had on my chance of getting a second date." John flexed his left hand. "In fact, I hope the case involves someone who needs to be thumped- might do my temper a world of good."


	2. Chapter 2

Sherlock spent the rest of the morning pondering the phenomenon that was John Watson. He had to admit that there were times when his flatmate eluded deduction and defied prediction. His reaction to Sherlock's solving the missing Turner masterpiece was a case in point. On the one hand, the doctor generally declined any case involving theft of art or an antique. "What do I know about these things? I'm a doctor, not an auctioneer." John liked to feel he was making a valuable contribution, and to him that meant giving a medical opinion.

He did not understand that for Sherlock, John performed a much more useful role. He'd been playing it up a bit in Devon to assuage John's anger when he described him as "a conductor of light", but Sherlock also knew that there was more than a grain of truth in that assessment. Having to explain something to John, having to deal with his questions and reactions gave Sherlock a sort of litmus test of normality that he had always lacked.  _The chemistry works._

He was now having an argument with his John avatar in his mind palace.

" _I respected your wishes; you don't like art cases, so I didn't tell you."_ Sherlock did not hold back his annoyance. Not involving the doctor had cost him some of his deductive edge, which irked him on several levels. He didn't like the idea that he'd formed some sort of dependence on the doctor. It was rather inconvenient and disconcerting.

Avatar John's reaction was a slightly petulant, " _why didn't you get me involved? Disappearing off to Russia without an explanation is more than a bit not good, Sherlock. I was worried. For all I knew, Moriarty had reappeared and dragged you off somewhere. So, next time, tell me what the hell's going on, please._ "

That sent Sherlock off on thoughts about Moriarty as he paced the corridors of his Mind Palace. The 'game' had turned deadly serious at the pool. It was win or be killed. Moriarty's taunting words echoed up from the basement padded cell - " _I'm gonna kill you anyway someday. I don't want to rush it, though. I'm saving it up for something special. No-no-no-no-no. If you don't stop prying, I'll burn you. I'll burn the heart out of you_." Sherlock knew, just as Moriarty knew, that this threat was aimed squarely at John. Sherlock found it  _interesting_  that John himself seemed unaware of that fact.

He turned around to scowl at the John avatar following him, and growled,  _"Why don't you understand that you are important to me?"_

Whatever happened with Moriarty- and there were so many scenarios that it made his head hurt to try to think of every eventuality- Sherlock knew that he was going to have to put so much distance between himself and John that the doctor would no longer be a target for the Irishman. That meant a public end to their relationship.

" _It's for your own good, John."_  Sherlock was beginning to realise that would  _hurt_ ; not just because he was better at The Work for being with John. He couldn't afford to be sentimental or put them both at risk because of his own emotional weaknesses.  _So, this has to end._  John would be annoyed at losing his adrenaline fix, but it would pass. He'd just assume it was "a bit not good" – another socially unacceptable aspect of Sherlock's behaviour- and then get on with his life.

A door opened in the corridor and a familiar figured fixed him in that piercing gaze of his. " _Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock."_

" _SHUT UP, Mycroft!"_ Sherlock slammed the door in his brother's face. In an odd way, he was having to do the same distancing exercise from his brother- provoke a public split that would turn Mycroft's gift of personal information about Sherlock to Moriarty into a full-blown obsession. His brother had baulked at this plan, but Sherlock had, for once, out-manoeuvred Mycroft. The friction between the two was now real, so much so that his brother was being petty and trying to stop cases from coming Sherlock's way. The willingness of Elizabeth Ffoukes to provide a lifeline of cases was therefore doubly welcome- first, because they reduced the tedium of not working, and second, solving cases was now thumbing his nose at Mycroft. The more publicity he could get for his successes, the more irritated his brother would become, and the more entranced Moriarty would be.  _Now that's what I call a win-win._

So, he'd come back from St Petersburg elated- the plot to establish Lars Sigursson's reputation with Moriarty had moved forward, whilst at the same time solving one of Elizabeth's 'high profile' cases. It was proof to himself that he could be just as effective on his own as he was with John's help. And Mycroft had no idea about the Sigursson Plan.

As Mrs Hudson arrived to do some hoovering, Sherlock moved out of the corridor in his Mind Palace into the room that looked exactly like the Baker Street living room. He kept pacing, trying to deflect John's anger at being kept out of cases.

The avatar doctor just glared at him. The man's impulse to run toward danger had taken John into a war zone. Deprive him of that and he would get restless and tetchy- just like this morning. Sherlock stopped his pacing and threw up his hands in mock surrender.  _"Alright, the next one- I promise. If it's possible…I know you stay at Baker Street and put up with me because you crave the adrenaline rush of solving cases almost as much as I do. I will try to get you involved in the next one."_

"Sherlock?"

For a moment, the consulting detective was confused. His John avatar shouldn't be speaking in a woman's voice.

"Sherlock!"

He opened his eyes and realised Mrs Hudson was staring at him, gesturing with the Hoover. "Lift your feet, will you? I need to get under the chair. I swear at times you act as if I wasn't in the room."

He didn't have the energy to tell her that was exactly how he managed to cope with her presence. Instead, he got up from his chair, marched over the top of the coffee table and threw himself onto the sofa. With a sigh, he closed his eyes again and tuned her out.

His John was still there, glaring at him in the living room of his Mind Palace. But Sherlock decided against trying to explain; discussion just exacerbated the problem.

The disagreement was like a little wound in their relationship, a bit sore, especially if you picked at it. Better not to dwell on it too much. Sherlock's stock answer to difficulties like this was to avoid them, which is why he was now trying to put even more distance between himself and the doctor. That said, he wasn't trying to force John to leave Baker Street prematurely. That would just expose him even more to Moriarty's threat.

" _Don't argue, John. Ignorance is bliss. Be blissful that I am not telling you the whole truth_."

Sherlock beat a hasty retreat from his Mind Palace and that glare.

His thoughts were interrupted by the vague sound of a door bell. He could hardly hear it over the noisy Hoover.

"Mrs Hudson!"

She kept vacuuming, oblivious to him or the bell. Annoyed, he marched down the stairs and opened the door to a courier who looked just like any other motorcycle courier, only Sherlock knew that it was an MI6 agent, who had the decency not to be surprised at the sight of a man still in his pyjamas and dressing gown at nearly one o'clock in the afternoon. Sherlock signed for the package and bolted back up the stairs two at a time.

By the time he had gotten back up the stairs, he'd opened the padded envelope addressed to him, noting it was marked in the top left corner with the words "Number Two of Three". As he entered the living room, he reached down and pulled the Hoover's plug from the wall socket. Startled, Mrs Hudson turned to look at what had caused the machine to stop.

"You can finish later, Mrs Hudson. I need silence.  _NOW!_ " He pointed imperiously back down the stairs.

"Really, where did you learn your manners? There is such a word as 'please', but it doesn't seem to exist in your vocabulary."  She looped the long cord up and trundled the machine past him and out of the room. "And it would only be polite to offer to carry this heavy thing down the stairs. I do have a hip problem, you know."

Sherlock shut the door behind her and sat down on the sofa. He pulled out another smaller white envelope, on which was written in turquoise ink

_I was planning another case for you, but it can wait. This one is very current- and will go public by nine o'clock tonight. It comes courtesy of Five, not Six. There is more to this than meets the eye, but we can't find any immediate connections to our third party._

It was in Elizabeth Ffoukes's handwriting; he recognised it now, after the first package which had contained the details of the missing Turner watercolour. So, she had no direct evidence that this was a Moriarty case, which made it easier for him to consider involving John. And MI5 suggested a UK only arena. He just hoped that it would conform to his other stipulation- high profile, and newsworthy enough to catch the Irishman's eye.

He opened the white envelope, breaking the seal and tipping out the contents onto the coffee table. Out spilled a couple of sheets of typed paper, a photocopy of something and a photograph, which landed face down. As soon as Sherlock turned over the photograph, he was glad to see that it wasn't another art case.  _John will be pleased._

The image was that of a smartly dressed man, probably in his forties. The suit looked English, expensive hand tailoring, but probably not Jermyn Street. It was a corporate photo, rather than a snap shot, perhaps destined for a brochure or a website. Something about the man whispered "new money", but with a thin civilising veneer of public school and Oxbridge. The slightly long-ish brown hair made him look a bit academic. Maybe it was the pair of serious glasses.

The yellow sticky attached identified him as Nathaniel Warren, Managing Director, Wealth Management, Barclays PLC.

Sherlock unfolded the typed sheets and read the text.

_Warren was kidnapped at 10.12pm last night on his way home from a bankers' dinner hosted by the Lord Mayor at Mansion House. The snatch operation was slick and well-planned. CCTV on both sides of the junction of Wood Street and Gresham Street was disabled for seventy three seconds; when the footage resumed, Warren's car was empty and parked by the side of Gresham Street. Both he and the driver provided by his bank are missing. Traffic on Gresham Street was heavy at the time and twelve cars were identified as possibly involved, but. ANPR* helped City Police to subsequently clear all twelve. The security staff at Milbank investigated the car when they became suspicious of a car they didn't recognise being parked in their entrance way. The police were called at 11.04pm._

_Barclays Bank's CEO was contacted by email at midnight exactly with a ransom demand, but unfortunately, due to the content it was caught in the spam filter that operates to protect his accounts, and was not discovered until 5.12am. The ransom sum demanded is £1.3 billion._

This remarkable figure was underscored in the same ink as Elizabeth's message on the front of the white envelope.

_A copy of that e mail is enclosed here. GCHQ has not yet been able to identify the route of entry and point of origin for the e mail; it simply loops back, as if it were sent by the CEO himself, from one of his other accounts (he has four, apparently, none of which are known to the general public)._

Sherlock pushed through the various bits of paper on the coffee table until he found the email.

TO: CHIEF EXECUTION OFFICER, BARCLAYS BANK PLC

FROM: CUSTOMERS' CRUSADER

WARREN IS OURS. IF YOU WANT HIM BACK ALIVE, THE PRICE IS £1.3 BILLION. YOU KNOW THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NUMBER. WE GO PUBLIC AT 9 TONIGHT ABOUT WHY WE THINK IT IS MORALLY WRONG FOR YOUR BANK TO HOLD YOUR CUSTOMERS TO RANSOM TO FEED YOUR GREED. PUT AN AD IN THE FT ON WEDNESDAY TO TELL US YOUR DECISION, AND WE WILL TELL YOU HOW WE WANT TO COLLECT.

Sherlock snorted.  _John's going to love this one._ But he feared the doctor's sympathies might be more with the kidnappers than the victim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *ANPR = automated number plate recognition; the DVLA licensing agency's database is used by Transport for London to levy London's Congestion Charge- and by all police and intelligence services in the UK.


	3. Chapter 3

By the time Sherlock had read the rest of the file, he was already blue-tacking photos and materials to the wall behind the sofa. The yellow smiley face now wore the Barclays corporate photo of Nathaniel Warren. The consulting detective printed a series of Google maps of the City and used a highlighter to trace the route from Barclays HQ in Canary Wharf to Mansion House at Bank, and then on to Warren's home in Primrose Hill.

At 2.23pm, his phone vibrated in his pocket. He smirked as he spotted caller ID.

He didn't bother to say hello, but just stated, "I was wondering when you'd get the case."

He heard Lestrade sigh. "So, I have  _you_  to thank for landing me with this nightmare?"

Sherlock kept looking at the map on the wall, while talking to the DI. "Come on, admit it. It's been a while since you've handled such a high profile kidnapping."

"Yeah, well maybe that's because I prefer my victims to be bodies rather than alive. Less risk of things going wrong and me ending up taking the blame." There was a long suffering tone in the voice of the DI.

"You won't get blamed for anything. This one's going to be fun."

" _FUN?!_  Geez, Sherlock, sometimes you come out with the weirdest stuff. As if Barclays is going to hand over that kind of money. This is going to set records- the largest ransom demand in history."

"That's what makes it so much fun."

"Just do me a favour. Don't you  _DARE_  mention the word 'fun' when you are anywhere near the team. I've got a specialist from the Kidnap Unit already over at Warren's house, getting the family briefed. They are scared witless. There's a wife and an eleven year old kid who's been yanked out of prep school and is under guard at home.  _They_  don't think this is fun. You've seen the e mail?"

"Yes. I just  _loved_  the reference to the Chief EXECUTION Officer."

"Sherlock..." This was growled by the Detective Inspector. "Where's John?"

"At work, until six. I'll ask him to join me at the crime scene then. We have three hours before the news hits the streets."

"There's nothing to see- the City Police towed the car to the garage for forensic examination last night. It's clean as a whistle. They've already gone over the street with a fine-toothed comb- no trace, not even a brake patch where tire rubber was left. Nothing found, so they re-opened Gresham Street by four am this morning."

"Doesn't matter. You know my methods. When we're done, I'll give you a call." He cut the call off. Sherlock had no need of Lestrade's wittering – he needed to think.

 _This one is going to be done in the full glare of publicity. I really do hope that Moriarty is watching._  He texted John:

**2.04pm Meet me at the Red Herring*on Gresham Street as soon as you get off. Game On! SH**

oOo

"I thought you hated pubs."

"I do, as a general rule; they are noisy, crowded and full of alcohol- none of my areas."

"So…?"

"This is an entirely different kettle of fish, John."

That brought a smile to John's face. "Okay- if you are trying to be punny, then there must be something going on."

When the doctor arrived at the Red Herring Pub, he found Sherlock sitting in a tan leather chair next to the window, looking out onto the intersection of Gresham Street and Wood Street. The Belstaff was conveniently tossed into the leather chair next to him, to reserve it. And he needed to have done that, as John pushed his way through the after work crowd thronging the bar area. He moved the coat and sank down into the soft leather with a sigh, and picked up the pint of bitter sitting on the low table in front of them. He drank a deep mouthful, letting his eyes close in pleasure. He did enjoy the occasional pint.

"Thank you. I needed that. How long have you been waiting?"

"Deduce it from the temperature of the beer."

John smiled. He often complained that London pubs kept their bitters too cold. This pint of Fullers Chiswick was perfect. "Ten minutes since it was pulled. But that doesn't tell me how quickly you were served."

"When have you known me to wait patiently for service?"

"Yes, well, that means less than fifteen minutes. I'll stop feeling guilty."

Sherlock's glass was full of ice cubes and a slice of lime. John spotted the bubbles, and wondered.

"Sparkling water. I'm  _in disguise_ , John. Makes me less conspicuous in a room full of vodka drinkers. I seldom drink spirits and never while on a case. Fortunately, there are others in the room far less sober and I am able to overhear their gossip."

John had to lean forward and concentrate to be able to hear the consulting detective. Sherlock's baritone carried just far enough against the hubbub in the room.

"So, what's interesting about that?"

"The City is a place where money is made because of information- shared or hidden, public and private. The talk at the bar is about three things. First, the usual M&A work, big bids by American companies which are trying to find efficient tax vehicles to take over and move their business into, so they can escape US taxes. It's quite the wheeze at the moment. Another story doing the rounds is how the banks are stone-walling on the court cases by business customers suing them for mis-selling interest rate swaps. The other gossip is about dark pools- where bankers are keeping money out of the regulatory system. Any one of those three topics could be relevant to the crime that brought us here- a kidnapping occurred last night. It's due to hit the news at 9pm. That gives us two and a half hours to consider the crime scene without interference."

"Where's the crime scene?"

Sherlock smirked. "Over my left shoulder."

Startled, John looked out on what appeared to be a normal street corner. The side road, Wood Street, was across from them and joined in a T junction with Gresham Street, where the pub was located. "On Wood Street?"

"It carries on behind you- Wood Street isn't straight; it's decidedly bent. And it was the scene of a kidnapping last night." He smirked again.

John looked over his shoulder at the side road behind him. It too was named Wood Street. Anyone travelling up it would have to go left onto Gresham Street for all of about twenty feet before turning right to re-join it.

"What makes this corner special?" Looking at Sherlock, John knew from experience that the consulting detective had figured something important out. He was almost fizzing with excitement.

"This is the  _perfect_  place to do a very quick snatch. There is only one CCTV camera that catches all of the action- it's the one over my left shoulder. And there is a _delicious_  blind spot, as well. The other two cameras on the side of the building behind you are more about pedestrians and the northern bit of Wood Street, so won't have seen anything material happening on Gresham. But the fact that they were disabled as well suggests that was the path of the kidnappers. Makes it easy enough to disrupt the signal of those three cameras and make the snatch. The most interesting fact is that the coverage was interfered with for just seventy three seconds. Probably just at the intersection, before joining the main road. Liberated of its driver and passenger, the car was then driven less than ten feet forward on Gresham to join the queue of cars parked in the entrance way of that building." He pointed to the gleaming modern glass building across the road. "There is a neat little drive way to park the abandoned car off the road, so less likely to arouse suspicions. There will be a steady stream of taxis and other cars even late at night in there; it's the address of a major New York law firm. Busy until at least midnight."

He took a long drink from his water, and then smiled. "Someone has planned this very, very carefully."

John took another couple of swigs of beer. The number of times that Sherlock would suddenly leap up and expect him to follow had taught John to drink and eat very quickly when in his presence.

"So, who's been kidnapped?"

"A banker- and not just any banker, but one important enough to be headline news on every paper and news bulletin once the news gets out. And the ransom demand is headline-grabbing, too. There may be more than one person kidnapped, because the driver is also missing. He might well have been in on the kidnapping, but I won't be sure until we figure out where they took them."

John shook his head. "Well, a piece of me says any banker deserves a bit of bad luck now and then, but I guess being held for ransom is a bit extreme. Any chance it's a pissed off customer?"

Sherlock smirked. "I thought you would find it amusing. The ransom demand was signed by someone calling themselves 'the Consumers' Crusader'- but I think that is designed to attract public sympathy for the kidnappers, rather than being real. Just a diversionary tactic designed to ramp up publicity. The media will  _love_  the story."

John had the decency to shake his head. "Kidnap is never a joke. What sort of banker? If he's sitting on a big fat bonus, I guess it makes him a conspicuous target." He looked out of the pub windows, spotting the CCTV cameras. "I don't understand. Even if these cameras were mucked around, surely, the police would've tracked traffic before and after? If they were out for just over a minute, then surely they can see who was in the area before and after the black-out?"

Sherlock nodded. "And all the cars travelling through cameras on either side of this intersection have been checked out over the past twelve hours- nothing suspicious. The police are probably now trying to figure out who could delete the presence of a car from the traffic cameras. In fact, all it means is that the car which took him was on the scene for less than seventy-five seconds. That means it originated from somewhere in the immediate vicinity and disappeared again to hide somewhere in the vicinity- so it is not caught on camera leaving or entering the area. The police are  _so_  predictable. They never think things through to come to their logical conclusion."

John felt Sherlock's intention to leave before he actually voiced it, and hurriedly tipped the rest of his pint down his throat. Even so, before he could return the glass to the table, Sherlock was in motion and moving through the crowd. John rushed to catch up so he could follow in the taller man's wake. He'd never understood why- maybe it was Sherlock's height, but he suspected it was something in the man's body language that led crowds to step aside and let him through. The Consulting Detective's movement through a crowd was never social. No eye contact, a set expression on his face that was vaguely hostile, and a laser-like concentration on the exit. People just got out of his way.

Once the two men were on the pavement, John realised was that even at dusk, Gresham Street was well lit. The City of London had so many new buildings, most of which specialised in glass walls. The light from the office blocks and the street lamps meant it was bright enough to read.

"Yes, John, you are right. No dark corners to hide in."

The doctor looked askance at Sherlock. "How did you know..?"

"You looked up. Watching your eyes tells me what you are thinking."

"So, what's the answer?"

The consulting detective was looking eastwards on Gresham Street. He then spun on his heel and looked to the west.

"What's that?" John gestured to the tree lined park across the road, on the other side of Wood Street heading north.

"Churchyards of Saints Anne and Agatha, adjoining that of St John Zachary. The first one is just a park now; church was demolished. The second is still there. Maintained by the Goldsmiths Guild."

John sniggered. "How do you know this stuff, but still manage to delete the solar system?"

"Who says I knew it before today? Google Maps put all this at our fingertips. The reason it matters is because London's streets are rivers of crime, John. It pays to know what is on the shoreline." He gestured to the modern building diagonally across from them. "This is lawyer country. That's the location of a US legal firm." He turned and pointed south, back down Wood Street. "There are three more law firms in that building." Then he spun about, "…and not one but two investment banks that way. On the far side of this building there is another bank."

"How does this matter?"

Sherlock shook his head. "Don't know, yet. But it is likely to be significant. The kidnappers know this area well enough to plot it perfectly. That is important. I'm not sure why, but it's enough to warrant proper investigation." Then he was in motion again, and John followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * The Red Herring pub exists- exactly where it is in this story. In fact, this whole scene has been lovingly investigated by myself and the incomparable Anyawen, on a rare trip to London. What two fangirls get up to... Go read her stories- they are more fun than mine.


	4. Chapter 4

Sherlock strode off across Gresham Street and headed south down Wood Street. John had to quick march to keep up with his stride. The taller man was looking both right and left at the building façades. When he came to a sudden halt, John nearly ran into the back of him.

"What do you see, John?" Sherlock was looking at a roll-up metal door set into the side of the building. There was a motion sensor stuck in the wall above it.

"Uh…a garage door?"

This provoked the inevitable roll of eyes.

"You see but do not observe.  _Obviously_  this is a garage door. But more important, this is a  _private_  entry and exit onto this road. The target car could have passed here, and then the snatch vehicle left this garage and entered Wood Street directly behind it. As the front car pulled to a stop at the intersection less than twenty feet from here,  _both_  cars would be in the blind spot caused by the disruption to that one CCTV camera." He turned around and walked back to the corner of Wood and Gresham Streets.

Now diagonally across from the Red Herring pub, and under the CCTV camera, Sherlock stopped again. "Here is where the switch was made. The banker's driver stops to look at the traffic on Gresham Street and then the doors are thrown open, and the passenger taken to the vehicle directly behind. The driver of the front car is either dragged out at the same time, or voluntarily leaves- we won't know which. If he's guilty, then he drives it around the corner. If innocent, then a new driver gets in and turns left, goes four meters to the right and parks, exiting the car before the CCTV disruption ends. In the next forty five seconds or so, the kidnappers' car, now with the target in it, crosses the road and goes north on Wood Street. That car  _has_  to get off the road before the camera coverage resumes. Let's see how far he could get." With that, Sherlock stepped off the pavement, and timed his crossing perfectly to weave between two fast moving cars. John was not so lucky; he had to wait until the traffic cleared a bit to take the chance of dashing across.

By the time he caught up to the consulting detective, Sherlock was already twenty meters up Wood Street, standing on the pavement looking north with a broad smile on his face.

"What's so funny, Sherlock?" John was panting a bit from his dash up the road.

The taller man clapped his hands together with delight. "Oh, this is such  _fun!_  The kidnappers have a sense of humour."

John's expression must have betrayed his confusion. Smirking, Sherlock pointed to the odd looking tower less than a hundred meters ahead. "St Alban's tower. It used to be part of a Christopher Wren church, but it was bombed during the war and eventually knocked down in 1965, leaving just the bell tower. As you can see, Wood Street splits. Northbound goes to the left and southbound to the right of the tower. Look over to the right. That building is the City of London Police Headquarters. The kidnappers are cocking a snook at the coppers, John."

He then turned and pointed at an entrance in the side of the building they were standing next to. "Behold, another garage." This one was open, but down the ramp a barrier was across the driveway, with a card key box on the driver's side. There was a CCTV camera on the wall, pointed down at the barrier.

"You think the kidnappers went down here?"

"Take your pick, John. The kidnappers were spoiled for choice." Sherlock turned and faced across the road. John followed his gaze- and realised that there was not one but four separate sets of sliding doors opposite where they were. One of them was open. John could see that the entrance was both taller and wider, capable of taking a larger delivery truck in. Behind the security guard standing at the door watching them looking at him, John could see a cavernous space.

Sherlock was still smiling. "The one on this side serves both Schroders Bank and Investec, so the garage is going to be accessible by key card to at least a hundred cars. But that one might be even more interesting." He stepped off the pavement to cross the road and walked up to the security guard in the high-vis jacket who was now scrutinising them carefully.

Sherlock eyed the computer pad in his hand. He flashed one of his fake smiles, the one that John always found disconcerting, mostly because other people seemed to be taken in by the expression when to him it screamed falseness. "Officer, I hope you can help me."

The black guard's face did not suggest that he was minded to be of assistance, but he rather reluctantly said, "What's the problem?"

"Were you on duty last night?"

"What's it to you if I was?"

"Because you see, someone hit my car. It was parked around the corner here- at the Chartered Institute of Loss Adjusters on Gresham Street, and as I pulled out from the kerb, the idiot ran up my backside. I stopped to look at the damage, and the guy just sped off, took a right up this street. I was so outraged, I got back in my car and followed- I wanted his licence plate number so I could report him for a hit and run accident. It's people like him that drive up the cost of everyone's insurance. But when I got around the corner, he was gone." He looked rather theatrically up the road. "Now there's no way he could have managed to get around St Alban's tower that fast. No one's stupid enough to speed in front of a police station, so he must have turned into one of these garages. I don't suppose you remember, do you?"

This little oration was given in what John described as Sherlock's "slightly gormless geeky" tone, the one that is designed to be not threatening and just a little endearing. It generally worked with the female listener, but he was not having the same effect on the guard.

Shaking his head, the guard said, "Not bloody likely. The cars all go down to the parking using the next set of garage doors- this is the deliveries and bins. You know, the tradesmen's entrance, so a car would be kind of out of place. What time this happen last night?"

"Well, it was after the Institute dinner, so I guess it was between ten fifteen or ten thirty."

"Wouldn't know about that. This entrance shuts at nine. By the time you had your problem I was home in bed. You'll have to check with the security room; they've got cameras on the car ramps."

Sherlock gave him a big grin. "Thanks, very much. That's been a big help."

He walked away, leaving John to flash an awkward smile at the guard and then dash after him. By the time he caught up, Sherlock was on the phone.

"Yes, you heard me the first time, Sergeant Donovan; I need you to get the CCTV coverage for the whole of Wood Street starting at 4am  _this morning_ , as well as  _all day_  yesterday, up to six pm. And find Detective Inspector Lestrade as soon as you can and get him to organise a search warrant; he will need to liaise with the City Police, but it is rather urgent." He hung up and pocketed his phone.

"So, do you think it's the garage across the street between the two banks or one of the car ramps over here?"

Sherlock looked puzzled. "No, it's none of the above. It's definitely the one we just left. Didn't you notice the fact that there is  _no_  CCTV? That makes it perfect. The others would have a lasting record of the entry of the kidnappers's car, so they wouldn't chance it. And the fact that the tradesmen's entrance wasn't manned after nine pm means that it almost certain that the kidnappers used it. They could move a hostage quite easily into a delivery vehicle and just leave it there until the garage re-opened, driving it out without anyone being the wiser."

John thought it through. "But if the place was locked from nine pm, how'd they get access?"

Sherlock sighed. "Think about it, John. This building is multi-tenanted. This is technically the back side of Number Five Aldermanbury. There are at least twenty tenants, all of whom, big and small, will have access to the car parking garages. While those are controlled by key coded entrances, the delivery vans for those businesses have to enter through that general entrance. Which means that there are going to be a  _lot_  of people who know about that garage. You were obviously paying more attention to that idiot guard than to what was important. You didn't spot the keypad on the sliding doors. The code to that is hardly going to be secret- anyone who manages a delivery into the building will know it- and have given it to dozens of delivery companies. Makes it  _so_  easy for kidnappers to get it; they just pose as delivery men to get the code. They blag their way into the other garage on south Wood Street, pop out behind the target at 10.11pm, make the snatch, come around the corner here, get into the delivery area and park their getaway van in there. They wait until morning, and then they drive out when no one is watching CCTV coverage relating to a kidnapping that occurred ten hours earlier. No one suspects a thing. Easy when you think about it."

Not for the first time, John was reminded how grateful he was that Sherlock applied his talents to  _solving_  crimes, rather than perpetrating them.  _He'd make a terrifyingly successful criminal._


	5. Chapter 5

"Sebaaaasstian."

There was enough petulance in the tone of voice to make the sniper stiffen. But, duty called, so he got to his feet and went into the living room area of the two bedroomed penthouse suite. The Threadneedles Hotel might be a Marriot, but the five stars and the location- only 100 meters from the Bank of England, made it an ideal location. James Moriarty was on a fact-finding reconnaissance mission.

"Bring me another glass of champagne, will you?"

As he reached into the ice bucket and grabbed the Dom Perignon bottle, Sebastian felt uncomfortable. The oak panelling and wooden furniture was advertised as being a fusion of "grandeur and simplicity", but to the former army officer, it smacked of the over-priced vulgar taste of people with more money than sense. Still, he wasn't employed for his sense of the aesthetic, so he wisely kept his opinions to himself.

Jim was lounging on a deck chair on the tiny balcony, watching the twilight over the City's roofs. As he poured a second glass, Moran grumbled "This was supposed to give us line of sight; to do that we need to be looking out over Threadneedle Street." In fact, the penthouse balcony was in the back of the hotel, looking west there was a strange stone domed tower, with a gold cricket on the top that caught the very last rays of the sun.

The Irishman laughed. "Where's your sense of history? The Royal Exchange is a true phoenix. The first one lasted a century before burning down in the great fire of 1666. The second one managed a bit longer- it was burnt to the ground in 1838. This is the third version, built a couple of years later and still going strong. Maybe I should burn it down."

Moran sniffed. "Harder to break into the Bank of England, isn't it?"

A world weary sigh. "You always try to spoil my fantasies. Yes, Tiger, I  _know_  the whole point is to show off and make everyone think I have a magic computer key. Yes, I  _know_  that this is all about rubbing Mycroft Holmes' nose in things. But…" he took a sip of the champagne. "Just once, I'd love to do something for  _me._  Just spontaneous" He smirked. "Spontaneous combustion for  _fun_. Just because I  _can_."

"But then all that work I just did in the bell tower would go to waste."

" _You're SO boring._  You are just all work and no play." He drained the glass and sat up, scowling over the view that he had just been taking pleasure in. "So, what's happening now at the Old Lady*?"

Moran went back into the sitting area and looked at the laptop. It was showing footage of a camera that he had installed that morning in the bell tower of St Margaret's Lothbury. The Wren church had a ring of only three bells, so was seldom visited, but he and Jim had posed as employees of Mears & Stainback, the firm that had re-hung the bells back in the 1950s. "Think of it as after-sales service" had been Jim's spiel to get them access. Once in the tower, getting the web camera positioned was easy. It was now relaying a nearly live feed of the back door of the Bank of England. Not just any old door- this was the one used by the bullion vans. He'd already managed to get a complete delivery schedule, and the electronic eavesdropping microphone was catching all of the conversation between the vehicle drivers and the Bank's security staff. Jim was on the hunt for a driver to corrupt or otherwise blackmail into giving him what he needed. It would be a key to getting access- other devices planted inside a bullion delivery would give them the vault information they needed.

Moran was rather shocked at how easy it was proving to be.

Jim sniffed. "Well,  _of course_ , it is easy. That's the whole point. If I'm going to rub that aristocratic Holmsian nose into it, then we have to make it provocative."

"But I still don't understand. If you're going to all the trouble of breaking into the Bank of England's gold vaults, then why not  _take_  the gold?"

Jim had come in from the balcony to look over Moran's shoulder. Now, he snapped his fingers alongside Moran's left ear. "Anybody home in there? Don't be so  _vulgar_. This isn't anything so mundane as  _theft._  I'm proving a point. And to make that point even stronger, not a single bar can go missing. Any more than a single one of Good Queen Bess's best bling is going to leave the Tower. This is a  _warning_  that not even his three piece suited-ness can ignore. Just  _sooooo_  embarrassing!"

He was still chuckling as he filled his glass again. "The good old fashioned methods are sometimes the best. Why complicate matters unnecessarily? Besides… the British public might give me a medal once tonight's news hits the fan."

"You'll deserve it." Moran knew that part of his job was to stroke the ego. Just occasionally- anything too obviously sycophantic usually provoked a very hostile reaction. Over the years, Sebastian had learned the fine art of stoking the fires without getting burned in the process. "Your idea couldn't be better timed to hit a nerve."

"Don't I always hit the spot? It wouldn't be fun if I didn't get up somebody's nose. Just so much potential in this one. I  _love_  how the media are going to lap it up. The _consumers' crusader_ is just a perfect smokescreen, if I say so myself." He sniffed. "Should have charged them more. Bloody Americans- always want to haggle. This one is rather exquisite; still, I do it for the applause, not the dosh."

Jim picked up the remote and thumbed down the EPG before selecting Bloomberg. The TV presenter was talking about how the whole of the banking sector was taking a bit of a hit on Asian stock markets, now that Barclay's figures had been out for a day. Jim started to chuckle again. "Come on, Sherlock. I've left this one all wrapped up with a pretty little bow for you. I know you can't resist a pretty little puzzle. "

Moran scowled. "Him again? I thought the game plan was to go for the brother."

Jim shot him a filthy look. " _Down, Tiger_. You  _are_  being a serious spoilsport." He sniffed. "Just a little amusement on the way. It's fun watching the way that beautiful mind works. Luckily, the Americans were more than happy to follow my instructions to the letter. I've left lots of little treasure hunt clues. If he's clever enough, he'll figure it out. It would serve those aggressive Americans right to get caught. I don't know how much the consulting detective knows about finance, but this is just a little test to draw him out of hiding."

He threw himself down on the chaise lounge, striking a pose of Victorian ennui. "Maybe I should try to organise a sort of Armageddon game for him- a bit like dominoes; just set every bank in the world up to topple over, one after another. Wouldn't that be amazing? Just imagine the scheming. His brother would not be amused, but Sherlock and I could have fun. The politicians, the economists, central banks- everyone screaming it was the end of the world." He sniggered. "Now  _that's_ power. To be the person who made the world financial system crash and all for the sake of playtime." He looked at his fingernails, as if wondering whether it was time for a manicure.

Moran looked up from the screen. "Didn't someone already do that? You know, back in 2008?"

In a whirl of motion, the Irishman launched himself off the grey upholstered lounger and came over to pat Moran on the head. It intensely irritated the former soldier. _He's far too tactile for my taste._  But he knew from experience that the more he let on that it annoyed him, the more it would incite Moriarty to do even more. So, he bit the inside of his cheek and stayed very, very still.

"Poor little tiger. Economics isn't your thing, obviously. No, no, no…2008 was collective stupidity and greed. Why, if I had been involved, they would never have been able to resurrect the banking system."

Moran focused on the screen. The pavements along Lothbury Avenue were thronged with commuters going home; it was a popular cut through. The tide of workers coming out of Cazanove's up Tokenhouse Yard, was pouring past the church on its way to Bank Station.

He felt a compelling need to shift the topic of conversation off the object of Moriarty's current affections. Moran was curious. Jim had set in motion his plans about the Tower and the Bank of England. But at the beginning of this mission, the Irishman had said there would be  _three_  targets. He decided to risk asking the obvious question.

"So, the Tower and the Bank. What's the third target? The Queen?"

"Boring. No- been there, done that, and still have the scars. Lost those photos of the little princess, didn't I, when Irenee Adler got caught with her French knickers down. If I ever get my hands around that little neck of hers, she will learn what it means to become a pair of shoes." Jim turned off the TV and flung the remote back onto the glass coffee table. "No- this one needs to hit below the belt. And it needs to prove my value to all those clients out there of mine who might be thinking my reputation took a hit after the Holmes brothers managed to wiggle out of that little Belgravia trap."

Moran was now even more curious. "So, what's it to be? A direct counter-attack against MI6? I could organise an RPG round through the penthouse of Vauxhall Cross, if you like. That would put the wind up them."

Jim snorted. "You do have a rather  _obvious_  mind-set, Sebastian. It's been done, dear boy. The Real IRA got there before us, in 2000.** Anything so prosaic lacks finesse. No, think of something new. What does every criminal…well, apart from me, that is...worry about? Getting slammed into the slammer. Doing time. Going down. What a lovely load of phrases! The third little caper will show the world just how easy it is for me to spring a captive, open the cage, get people out of jail."

"How?"

"London has two world famous prisons- Wormwood Scrubs and Pentonville. I'll auction the privilege of escape to the highest bidder, and then we'll open the prison floodgates." He laughed and made a hand gesture as if stabbing a knife and twisting it. "A quick cut and thrust to the heart of the British Justice system."

He was now looking at the sliding door to the patio as the sun set below the buildings, and the cricket on the dome of the Royal Exchange went from being golden to a black silhouette against a darkening sky.

"Oh!" Jim turned around and gave Moran a beatific smile under a pair of dark eyes wide with delight.. "What a clever idea! I could just underscore the whole business by letting myself get caught…." He wandered off into the bedroom, thinking something through.

Moran tried to control his shock. He said loudly enough to be heard in the next room, "Why on earth would you want to put yourself at risk? You're the one who says that no one will ever catch you because you never get your hands dirty."

Jim reappeared to lean seductively against the door frame. "But, don't you see? It's  _perfect!_  I can let them catch me… arrest me…. put me in jail… and then I get my day in court to show them just what idiots they are, before walking out a free man. Oh, what fun! Talk about getting up Holmes' nose! I can demonstrate for the whole world to see just how easy it is for me to pervert the course of British justice. Let all the king's horses and all the king's men think that the pieces can't be put together. Then the jury says "Not Guilty"- well, think of all the free publicity! Every newspaper in the world would proclaim me as the 'king of crime.' There'd be no stopping me." He smiled. "Oh God, this is the best ever; I'm SO looking forward to this."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street is a term for the Bank of England. First used in 1797 in a political cartoon that has William Pitt, the Prime Minister, picking the coin-filled pockets of an old lady, personifying the Bank, whose dress is made of £1 notes.  
> ** On 21 September 2000 the Real IRA launched an attack against the MI6 HQ at Vauxhall, using a rocket propelled grenade launcher, which fired an explosive device that struck the eighth floor window of the south-western side of the building, which happened to be the location of the Foreign Intelligence Service. It took place at 9.45 pm, and there were no casualties. No suspects were ever arrested.


	6. Chapter 6

One warrant and two hours after leaving Wood Street, Sherlock was now wearing a path in Lestrade's office back at New Scotland Yard. The news had been released by the kidnappers twelve minutes ago and all hell was breaking loose.

The 'press release' from the kidnappers consisted of the email to the CEO, and already the camera teams were in the City and broadcasting live about "the Customers' Crusader", along the lines of 'man bites dog' story- revenge of the aggrieved customer. Profiles of Nathaniel Warren were being hastily cobbled together from the internet, and reporters were trying to explain how "Wealth Management" fit into the organisation of Barclays PLC.

"Busking- they don't know what else to say" was Sherlock's verdict. He was getting more and more agitated as he prowled the small office. The CCTV footage of Wood Street on the morning after the kidnapping was proving difficult to obtain- the City Police and the Metropolitan Police were arguing over who had control of the case. Sherlock was not amused. "Turf wars while a kidnap victim awaits rescue? Not a good idea. Sort it, Lestrade." He went back to pacing. John was seated in the visitor's chair across from Lestrade. After a full day's work at the clinic, his stamina was beginning to flag, and he stifled a yawn.

The DI sighed. "I'll do my best, Sherlock, but it's hard enough to get our own people to let us in on the case. The Met's Kidnap Unit wants to run this one- says it's not a murder."

" _YET_. Not a murder,  _yet_ , Detective Inspector. But the longer people waste time, the more likely that is to happen. I  _need_ that footage."

"And you're about to get it." Donovan was standing in the doorway, looking at Lestrade. "Guv, the front desk just rang up to say that DCI Mattison from City is on his way up to the press briefing room. He's brought the tapes with him to hand over to the Kidnap Unit. The Chief is going to brief him upstairs with James Poole, the Barclay's Head of Communications, at the same time. The victim's wife is due any minute. She will do the on-air plea, according to the script they're working on now."

Sherlock kept pacing, his path watched by Sally. She crossed her arms across her chest. "Why is the CCTV so important? The kidnap occurred at ten twelve last night. Footage for the next hour was looked at last night; didn't show a damned thing. Why on earth would film from the scene seven hours after the kidnap be anything but a waste of time?"

Sherlock stopped his pacing, but did not turn to look at her. Through gritted teeth, he said to Lestrade, "That's  _exactly_  what the kidnappers want everyone to think. When's the safest time to move a hostage? After everyone has stopped looking for him."

Behind Sally, the open plan office of the Met's Murder Investigation Teams was positively heaving with personnel. The story about the kidnapping was now all over the news wires. On the far wall of the office, a television screen mounted on the left wall was switched on, with the volume on low, with a reporter broadcasting from the pavement of Gresham Street. Across the bottom of the TV picture, a steady ticker was crawling across the screen.

**BBC BREAKING NEWS- 21.17 BARCLAYS BANKER KIDNAP LATEST £1.3 billion ransom demand. LIVE BROADCAST from New Scotland Yard expected before midnight.**

DC John Chambers of the Kidnap Unit arrived in the open plan room, carrying some boxes. Sherlock stopped his pacing mid-stride and darted out of Lestrade's office. He dodged around the officers standing around looking at the evidence board, and snatched the boxes of tapes from the Constable.

"I'll be in the media room, Lestrade. John, follow me."

"Sherlock- wait!" Lestrade grabbed Sherlock's arm as the consulting detective tried to slip past. Sherlock scowled at the offending hand.

"If you find something, get it to me ASAP. Anything, anything at all." The DI's expression was grim. "You know as well as I do that the first twenty four hours is crucial. I'm going into that press conference with nothing more to tell them than we are working on it. If you want to solve this, you are going to have to prove to both the City Police and the Kidnap Unit that you should be involved."

Sherlock shook Greg's hand off his arm. "Go, feed the voracious newshounds baying for something to put on their 24/7 news cycles." He headed off down the corridor, with John close on his heels.

Lestrade sighed, and looked across at Sally. "You know what he's like. He'll forget to keep us informed. He'll figure something important out but then go haring off after some suspect or other. Well, he can't do that on this one- there are too many egos involved on this case. So, get after him and watch what he is doing. Take Chambers with you. If he does come up with anything, text me in the press conference. "

Donovan's face betrayed both annoyance and disappointment. Greg knew that she had been hoping to be at the press conference- a chance for the DS to appear on television on such a high profile case was visibility that could boost an officer's career.

"Bloody hell, why do I have to do the  _babysitting_?"

"Count yourself lucky, Detective Sergeant; he wouldn't tolerate anyone else in the room."

She shook her head in disbelief. "Why do we put up with his antics?"

"Because he  _solves_  cases, that's why. When the guy is returned to his family, then you'll be glad you followed my orders."

This was accompanied by Greg making a shooing motion with his hands. Sally got the message and stalked out, her disapproval clear in every stride. She collected the Kidnap Unit constable and headed down the corridor to the media room. It was a grand title for what was little more than a broom cupboard stuffed with every conceivable form of media player. DVDs and CDs players, VHS recorders, tape decks s of every conceivable shape and size- even an 8mm reel-to-reel player. It was dark, claustrophobic and so not where Sally wanted to be right now.

When she opened the door, she was greeted by a baritone growl. "Shut the door; the light is distracting."

"Found anything interesting yet, Holmes?" Her sarcasm was evident.

It was John Watson who answered. "For God's sake, Sally, give us a break. There are hours' worth of footage to go through."

Chambers had followed her into the room. "Is there anything we can do to help?"

"Shut up."

Sally huffed, turned to the constable and told him to go get two more chairs. "We might as well get comfortable. It's going to be a long night."

Once the door was closed again and the two officers got seated, Sally realised that the only light in the room came from the screen in front of Sherlock, who was concentrating on the grainy black and white footage.

Muttering just loud enough to be heard by Sherlock and John, she made her frustrations known to Chambers. "If the Freak could only describe what we are supposed to be looking for, then it would be possible to get another two sets of eyes on this. Scanning hours of CCTV footage is not something I would normally volunteer for, but if it saves a kidnap victim, I'm willing to do my share."

Without looking up from the screen, Sherlock retorted, "Donovan, given your limited attention span and total inability to actually understand what it is you are seeing, I don't trust  _you_  to do this."

By quarter past midnight, three of the four people in the room were getting restless. Sally and Constable were bored witless, watching Sherlock fixated on the screen. The only movement was when Sherlock took out one tape and inserted another. Occasionally, he jotted something down on a pad beside the screen. Even John was yawning. The Yard's black swill, otherwise known as coffee, was little help. Caffeine just racked up the friction levels.

At twenty three minutes past midnight, Sherlock suddenly leaned forward and hit the replay button. John stirred himself awake, brought to the surface by the movement of the taller man.

"What is it?"

The reply was a barely whispered, "Gotcha."

John, Sally and Chambers got to their feet and clustered around the screen, looking over Sherlock's shoulders. On the screen were not one but two different tapes running side by side, synchronised by the time stamp running across the bottom of each feed. The left side showed the CCTV camera on the side of the Schroders building looking eastwards on Gresham Street. The other film was from the other camera on the bank building, this one showing a view of Wood Street running north, starting roughly twenty meters up from the junction with Gresham. Annoyingly, it didn't include the suspect garage in view.

Sally was the one who voiced the question on their minds. "Holmes, you've been assuming that the hostage snatch vehicle spent the night in that garage and then drove out in the morning. But you can't see the garage on this camera- or any camera, for that matter. So how is this going to help?"

He snapped. "It's obvious. How can you  _not_  understand?"

John was tired and a bit fed up. "Tell us normal mortals, Sherlock. A little translation, please. I'm too tired to enjoy being insulted."

"You're the one who asked to be involved, John."

"Yeah. And what part of  _involved_  is sitting around watching you watch a screen without knowing what it is I am supposed to be seeing?" The doctor snapped this a bit.

"Very well. Don't just watch.  _Observe_. The left screen shows every car that turns from Gresham onto Wood Street going north. The right screen shows every car going north on Wood Street twenty meters up from the junction. If there is no sign of a vehicle appearing to turn onto Wood Street, but it then shows up on the right hand screen, then it had to originate from one of the garages. Most of those that have done so since the four am start have been cars- and they're most likely to have come from the car garages on both sides- bankers and lawyers working late. But, we aren't looking for  _cars_ ; we're looking for delivery vehicles. Ones that presumably stayed in the  _delivery_   _bay_  overnight. Between six am and noon, there were plenty of arrivals- vans and trucks delivering stuff to the businesses that share Five Aldermanbury. But they are tracked coming in, as well as going out. There are only three vehicles leaving that delivery bay which were not tracked as entering. The first two were large trucks, which can be ruled out."

"Why?" Sally was suspicious.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Because neither would fit into the  _car_  garage on the south end of Wood Street. It has to be something small enough to get into that garage, so it can pop out behind the banker's car to make the snatch. How can you all be so stupid? That is the  _only_  place it could have come from, given that it was never caught on screen. It had seventy three seconds to leave one garage, make the snatch and hide in the second garage." He rewound the right had tape, watching the numbers, then flicked the mouse to stop it at 10.17am. Then he did the same on the left hand screen.

"This time,  _observe_. Look first at the traffic on Gresham."

The left hand screen showed a mixture of normal traffic. Cars, delivery vans, a motorcycle courier. Then a big truck. "Watch the turn indicator lights."

John said it. "Two cars turned onto Wood Street."

"Now, look at the traffic going north."

The two cars that had turned appeared now on the right hand screen about ten seconds later. Only between them was a small white van. Sherlock froze the frame. "There's your kidnap vehicle. The license plate number is HN10 KVV- go check the DVLA database for ownership, but it's probably been reported as stolen. Sally, go tell Lestrade."

She nodded and got up, stopping at the door for just a moment. "Don't do anything crazy while I am out of the room."

Sherlock just sighed and waved her away.

"Constable… whatever-your- name-is… go check out the CCTV footage on this vehicle once it passes the City Police building – see if you can get a side view. There's some sort of writing on the side, but it isn't distinguishable from this view. Give me your phone."

The rather peremptory order startled the young man, who had the temerity to ask "Why?"

"Because I want to key in my phone number so you can text me when you find the answer, if that's not too much trouble." The last comment was heavy with sarcasm. Wordlessly, the constable handed over his phone, and Sherlock tapped away furiously.

John's brief dash of adrenaline from the discovery was fading, and he was suppressing the urge to yawn again. "Sherlock, what happens next?"

"I have to go through yesterday's footage and find out when it parked in the garage of Eversheds. That's the law firm, by the way, in the building on the south side of Wood Street. The warrant was for their car garage video records, which are in the other box. That might give us a clue."

"Can you do that without me? Or better, can you take it home with us? I haven't had a thing to eat in twelve hours, and it's probably even longer for you. If we are to catch these people, it won't be when we are comatose with exhaustion."

"Boring."

"Necessary."

Sherlock's left index finger tapped the keyboard in annoyance. There passed one of their staring contests. Nothing was said, but so much was going on between the two men that Chambers actually felt awkward. "Um, okay, I'm off now, back to Wood Street station to do that CCTV footage." He left in a hurry, leaving the two men still locking in their silent battle of wills.

"Oh, all right." In a swirl of coat, Sherlock grabbed the box from beside the computer and was out the door before John could get his eyes fully adjusted to the bright fluorescent lighting out in the halls of New Scotland Yard. He stumbled after the consulting detective, catching up with him just as he vanished down the stairwell.

 _Why does he never take the lift here?_  Wearily, John threw open the door and followed the figure running down the stairs.


	7. Chapter 7

_BANKSTERS HELD FOR RANSOM BY CUSTOMERS' CRUSADER_

_BIGGEST KIDNAP RANSOM EVER DEMANDED_

_BARCLAYS BANK – GIVE UP THE BONUSES OR YOUR BANKER WILL DIE_

John spread the newspapers out on the coffee table, comparing headlines. "Every last one of them takes a negative view of the banker. They're making this a Robin Hood story; the kidnappers are being made into public heroes."

"Except the FT, John." The pink newspaper was flung across the room to land precisely in front of John.

_BARCLAYS SHARES PLUNGE ON KIDNAP PLOT NEWS_

"Well, yes. You'd expect that from the FT."

"The Financial Times is a great world newspaper, John. The finest example of a British company getting the global content right. It's objective, and it doesn't pander to public opinion."

"Maybe, but public opinion says Barclays should pay." The doctor gestured to the TV monitor behind his chair, where the ticker across the bottom of the screen showed the results of a poll.

**BBC BREAKING NEWS- 10.19 BARCLAYS BANKER KIDNAP LATEST OPINION POLL- 67% OF PUBLIC SAY PAY UP**

"They won't. They can't."

"Why not? If they've already allocated the money to bonuses, why can't they divert it to pay the ransom? Especially given that they are going to give it all back to the customers."

The kidnappers' second "press release" had gone live on the news wire services at 9am that morning. Once again, it was a copy of the e mail that went to the bank's CEO.

TO: THE CHIEF EXECUTION OFFICER

FROM: THE CONSUMERS' CRUSADERS

RE: RANSOM DEMAND

PAY THE £1.3 BILLION TO YOUR RETAIL BANK CUSTOMERS. DIVIDE IT EQUALLY BETWEEN ALL OF YOUR CURRENT ACCOUNT HOLDERS AND MAKE THE DEPOSIT. FT ADVERT SAYING THAT IS NEEDED BY WED CONFIRMING THIS, IF YOU WANT TO SEE WARREN ALIVE.

The news media had gone mad- every Barclays Bank retail customer would get just over £87 in their account. It didn't seem like much, but then there were over 15 million of them. It was a hugely popular idea. News channels did vox pop interviews of customers coming out of Barclays branches, most of whom came out with comments like "about time we got some of that profit back that the bankers have been making out of us for years."

Sherlock looked exasperated. "The bank can't just hand over the bonus pool to someone else because they are contractually obligated to pay those bonuses to  _staff_. The staff will sue if they don't get paid. Taking the money away from the people to whom it was legally promised? Well- you complained when you didn't get the £50 you thought was yours because the cash machine ate your card. Imagine how you would feel if it were half a million pounds."

"Yeah- but that was  _my_  money."

"The bonuses  _are_  their money; it belongs to the staff who earned it."

"Bankers earn enough in salary; why do they need a bonus?"

The Consulting Detective just rolled his eyes. "It's just a different way of packaging their remuneration. If they didn't get it that way, then they'd have to be paid salaries much higher than they already are- and those would have to be paid, no matter how well the individuals did in any year. This way actually leaves more discretion in the hands of the bosses. How is it you can't understand that?"

"Bankers are greedy."

Sherlock dismissed this with a wave of his hand. "Don't believe everything you read in the newspapers, John. This is all just a smoke-screen. While the police are chasing around for an aggrieved customer who has a grudge against Barclays, they are  _not_  looking for the right people."

John crossed his arms. "So, if the van signs are to be believed, they should be chasing a load of computer geeks?"

Chambers had texted through the video clip that caught the white van from a sideways angle: "DDS: Digital Data Services" with a fancy logo, e mail address and phone number.

"Stolen. Just a means to get it into the Eversheds garage. The paperwork is replete with fake order numbers and forged signatures. It was enough to get them the permit to park overnight in the garage."

"What did Chambers come up with about the van, apart from the name on the side? Do we know where it went?"

"The van was stolen from DDS eight hours before it was parked in the south Wood Street garage. When it left the delivery garage on north Wood street almost twelve hours later, it was tracked by CCTV going north on Wood Street to the junction of London Wall, where it crossed the intersection and then went into another garage- this one belonging to 125 London Wall, the Alban building. The garage is not in use, given that the ground floor of the Alban building is currently unoccupied - nor has there been a tenant for almost a year. It's not on CCTV cameras, and there are no cameras in the garage, but deduction said that's where it was, and lo, and behold, even the City Police could find it." Sherlock let his sarcasm drip from the words.

"Anything found in the van?"

"Forensic say there is clear trace of the kidnap victim being in the back- fibres from his suit, and a convenient sample of blood left on the floor. I think the kidnappers wanted the van to be found, and for the evidence to show that they have the banker. Otherwise, the van is completely clean."

"So what do we deduce from that?"

" _We_? What do  _you_  deduce from that?"

It was a typical Sherlockian challenge to John. Throughout their work together, Sherlock would do this- provoke John into making a fool of himself. "Nope, not going there.  _You're the genius._  You figure it out."

John had come last night home tired, hungry and a bit fed up with the tetchiness of Donovan. He complained in the taxi back that he wasn't sure what, if anything, he'd be able to contribute. Sherlock just plugged himself into the CCTV footage, and told John to go to bed. But once he was lying in bed, sleep eluded the doctor. Sherlock wasn't sure why, but he always knew when his flatmate was having a bad night from the creak of the floorboards, which betrayed John's restless movements in bed.

A little twitch of a smile appeared on Sherlock's face. "You're still angry. You didn't get your chance to  _thump_  someone. Or to use your medical knowledge on a body. There's no damsel in distress to motivate you, just a banker that you probably think  _deserves_  to be held for ransom. No guns or danger. I suppose you find this case _boring_."

"Well, I am beginning to wonder what I can possibly bring to this little party."

"If the puzzle itself is not enough to motivate you, then go do something else."

It was an off-hand, take it or leave it reply. And it irritated John. He rubbed his head and Sherlock watched his flatmate try to figure out what he could possibly say.

"Why do you think this is such a  _puzzle_? It seems pretty straight forward to me. An ordinary citizen, a bank customer, gets pissed off and kidnaps a banker to get some free publicity." He gestured at the newspapers. "Once he's had his fun, he'll let the guy go, even if they don't pay."

"You're so sure of that?" Sherlock gave him his  _look_. The one that irritated John so much- the slightly superior,  _I know everything, you silly idiot_. He'd being recently giving John rather too much of that look for the doctor to truly appreciate it.

In a tetchy tone, John snapped, "Well, come on! It's not like a criminal gang would court this kind of publicity. And they're going to  _give_  the money away. It's a  _stunt_. Instead of some shareholder getting profits or bankers getting bonuses, for once  _ordinary_ people, the customers, are going to get something. It's a victimless crime. Probably find this Nathanial Warren gets let out by the side of the road, or put in some sort of humiliating situation, and the story is all over."

Sherlock shook his head. "Sometimes I worry about the so-called  _ordinary people_. If your description is actually how they think, then it's why criminals get away with murder, mayhem and theft on a global scale."

John took umbrage. "It's not how  _ordinary people_ think; it's how  _I_  think. That's what I believe."

"Then what use are you to me?"

John just got up and grabbed his jacket off the hook by the door and marched downstairs. "I need some air. Some  _ordinary_  air breathed in by  _ordinary_  people!"

oOo

It wasn't supposed to have been another case of the  _let's irritate John_  strategy. Decidedly not. Sherlock had been looking forward to doing some good, old fashioned crime solving with the doctor. But the case wasn't obliging his wishes. He sighed. He was just going to have to solve this one on his own.

Sherlock never thought of a crime the way John did. He started with the facts, deduced motive and then did the legwork to test the hypothesis. This was a good case in point; while the outward appearance of the crime looked like a robin-hood scenario, Sherlock doubted that any ordinary individual bank customer would have either the skill or the nous to put together such a carefully constructed plan. It reeked of layers upon layers of motivations, cloaking the real criminals, who were willing to manipulate the press to keep well hidden.

He knew with a high degree of certainty what had happened to the "contents" of the van. If he'd been the kidnappers, he would have transferred the captive into a car kept in the Alban building garage and then driven off to the nearest large commercial garage. It would take days to figure out which car had left the Alban garage. London Wall was an incredibly busy road. The CCTV cameras on the street focused on the junction with Wood Lane- the garage exit was not visible. Meticulous cross checking for hours of traffic, across four different roads of the intersection would be needed.

Even so, if Sherlock had been in charge of the kidnap, it would only be the first of two more moves. The Barbican Centre just up the road had over 800 spaces in six different car parks- all interlinked underground. Another transfer, and it would become statistically harder to trace every car's movements. There were no fewer than six other car parks within a mile of the Barbican. Move the kidnapped banker in the boot of a car from the Barbican into another public car park, switch cars again and it would be impossible to chase down all the possibilities. It was well over the police threshold of resources and determination. And someone knew that. As a result, the idea that this was an ordinary bank customer taking revenge for a bank error was preposterous.

 _Wonder if Moriarty is involved?_ Despite what Elizabeth ffoukes had written, Sherlock was beginning to suspect this case was far more than it first appeared to be.

He considered the negative press that had accrued to Barclays over the past two days. The share price was down almost 8% at a time when the rest of the market- bank shares included- had risen almost 3%. So, a net loss of 11% of the market capitalisation of Barclays PLC. That was the equivalent of £3.85 billion, or three times the value of the bonus pool figure demanded in ransom.  _Who stands to gain from a fall of this amount?_  And it could fall further, too. If Barclays paid the ransom, then staff would sue- increasing the costs to the bank. The two hundred and forty institutional investors who owned significant numbers of shares would think about dumping even more of them, driving the price down even further.

Who gains when Barclays loses? Competitors were the obvious answer, but he doubted that any bank would be brave enough to engage in this level of corporate sabotage. The risks of getting caught were just too high for any board, or even a close cabal of management to agree to such an idea. Bankers as a breed were a rather stuffy lot, if exceedingly arrogant with it. He smirked, recalling the case of the Jade Hair Pin. Sebastian Wilkes, on the other hand, was just the sort of prat that might try something so stupid.  _He's not clever enough to pull it off._  That said, others might be. No one inside Barclays could be involved. No matter how aggrieved an employee was, destroying the share value of your employer would be self-destructive. Even an aggrieved ex-employee would think twice about destroying the value of his or her own pension.

He stretched out on the couch and put his fingers together under his chin, tapping one pair after another, over and over. The self-stimulation seemed to quieten his mind, focus his thinking. Banks were big places. Barclays employed over 130,000 people. While by number, most of those were in the retail side, the real money spinners were in investment banking, which employed less than twenty percent of the staff. Nearly half the group's profits came from wholesale business, nothing to do with the sort of activity that people like John thought of when they heard the word 'banking'. And realistically, the number of people earning the bank the really big profits- and earning the big bonuses- could be narrowed down to less than a thousand. That was also true of Barclay's competitors.

So, who gained the most from a decline in Barclay's share price? Institutional investors were also in most cases customers of the bank. They bought services, as well as shares. If someone could entice a big customer away from Barclays as well as lead them into divesting their shares in the bank, then that could deal a mortal blow to its profits and prestige- maybe even lead other big investors to think twice. So, who would be after the institutional investors?

He opened his laptop and spent a couple of hours trawling through financial websites. The largest institutional investor in Barclays was an American investment management company, managing five hundred and seventy three billion dollars of assets for just over 1,000 clients.  _So, high rollers indeed._  Shift even a proportion of that company's investments and you could make a huge dent in confidence in Barclays. Put that money into another financial institution, and it would be a huge boost to that organisation.

 _If I were them…_  Sherlock never admitted to others that part of his deductive success was based on thinking about the problem from the point of view of the criminal. He instinctively knew that it would be seen as "a bit not good," to use John's ungrammatical phrase. So, he often found other ways to explain his thinking, ones that would not call into question his own morality. All his life, people had been telling him what was right and what was wrong; sometimes he listened and acted on such views, because it suited him. That generally meant it worked. Practical, logical. Otherwise, he couldn't be bothered. Too much morality smacked of judgmental sentiment, in his view.

Sometimes, he would take a stand or have a view, but it was generally based on his own experience. He thought the public attitude towards illegal drugs to be absurd, but would take a case on if it involved a bully who offended his sense of fairness, even if what was being done might not involve breaking a law. "Right" and "wrong" were elastic concepts, and he stretched them, sometimes on a whim.

So, putting himself in the kidnappers shoes, if he wanted to damage Barclays and benefit some other organisation, what better way than to make the real ransom demand simple? Forget about Barclays, but target an institutional investor and make the demand simply a case of shifting the money from one place to another. The investor doesn't 'lose' any money, but someone does really benefit. The longer they stall in making the transfer, the more the kidnappers bash Barclays, damaging the value of their real target's investment in the bank. Neat- and very, very effective.

To make it work, the real target of the ransom demand would have to have a vested interest in saving the life of the hostage. Who would have that sort of concern about Nathaniel Warren? He started digging into the man's family, his relatives and close business contacts.


	8. Chapter 8

John returned to Baker Street at tea time. He didn't say a word, just hung up his jacket and went into the kitchen. A cup of tea appeared at Sherlock's elbow a few minutes later, and then the doctor sat down in his chair and opened the newspaper that he had abandoned when he'd marched off earlier. The only sound in the room was the occasional burst of Sherlock's rapid fire typing on the key board of his lap top, which was usually followed by a trip to pick something off the printer before blue-tacking it to the evidence wall over the sofa.

"Ah…" It was the quiet sound of Sherlock finally finding what he was looking for.

"So, you've solved it then?" There was an edge to John's question, but also an undercurrent of curiosity. Sherlock decided, for the sake of keeping John onside, to moderate any waspish retort.

"Yes…or, at least, I now have a workable hypothesis as to what is actually going on."

"Care to share?"

Sherlock smirked. John's curiosity was outweighing his annoyance.  _Good._  He walked over to the evidence wall. Nathaniel Warren's photo was still given pride of place, in the yellow smiley. Next to it now were the newspaper headlines.

"The police are busy looking in the wrong direction. This is a sophisticated operation launched by someone who is a client of T Rowe Price Associates, an American investment manager. He or she wants the firm to divest its shares in Barclays Bank and move the two hundred million dollars plus into another bank or banks' shares. Don't know which; that can't be deduced from the evidence."

He walked onto the sofa and tapped the sheet of paper that had the timeline on it. "The ransom demand was probably sent to the firm's London office this morning, just after the stock market opened and Barclays' share price fell."

"So, you're saying that all the publicity from the kidnappers sent to Barclays is what, a  _fake_?!" John sounded incredulous.

"The emails from the Consumers’ Crusader are just what you said- a publicity stunt- but one that is designed to put pressure on the real target to divest before the share price falls further."

John stood looking at the mess on the wall. Sherlock knew that John would have preferred everything to be neatly labelled, and relationships between the maps, print-outs, yellow sticky notes etc to be clearer. He'd once accused Sherlock of being "untidy" in his approach, earning him a glare. "I don't need to waste time lining up the edges of the paper; I'm not OCD like Mycroft." John's retort, that he hoped Sherlock's Mind Palace was more tidy than the chaos of the flat's living room, was shrugged off.

"So…if Barclays isn't the real target, then why kidnap their man? Why would some investor firm in American care enough about Warren?"

"Why, indeed, John. That's what took me a while.  _Cherchez la femme_. Warren is married to Ariadne Stafford. She is the Credit Risk manager in the London office of an American investment firm- the one that just happens to be Barclays Bank's largest institutional investor. We need to go talk to her. Preferably without the police knowing."

"Why can't they know?" John's tone was wary.

"Because there are too many interested parties involved. By the time the Met's Kidnap Unit, Lestrade's team  _and_  the City Police stick their collective stupidities into this, the chances of rescuing Warren decrease exponentially." He shook his head emphatically. "No, not even Lestrade. I don't want to put him in the position of having to lie to the others. What they all don't know won't hurt them."

Sherlock turned to the Belstaff and slipped the two ends of his scarf through the loop. John grabbed his coat.

oOo

"Please don't scream. Not if you want to see your husband alive." This was uttered in a baritone whisper.

Sherlock had his hand over the mouth of the brunette woman- Ariadne Stafford, otherwise known as Mrs. Nathaniel Warren. John was standing in front of the woman with a slightly pained look on his face. Not his preferred method of entry this, as Sherlock well knew. They'd been arguing about it since getting out of the taxi at the edge of Primrose Hill park. Then down an alley-way past the local Community centre and over three fences, they entered the back lower ground floor kitchen door of number two Chalcott Square, NW1- the fashionable residence of the Barclays Managing Director. John had rolled his eyes when Sherlock picked the lock, whilst explaining the logic.

"The front door is guarded by a Met constable, who is there to keep the journalists at bay. Inside, there will be at least one PC from the City Police as family liaison, plus another from the Met's Kidnap Unit who is managing the email and phone connections- both land lines and mobiles, in case the kidnappers call in. They won't, by the way; it's all going to be done through e mails to the Barclays CEO that get published in the papers. It maximises the PR damage and lowers the share price every time they do it."

"So, we're just going to break and enter, and then scare a family already traumatised by a kidnapping? Why won't they get the police in here to arrest us?"

As the door lock gave way, Sherlock stood up and answered as he swept in. "Because I know what Mrs. Warren isn't telling any police officer."

A half hour later, and their target came down the stairs into the kitchen, where Sherlock was now speaking very quietly into the ear of Mrs Warren. "No, I'm not a kidnapper. But then, you know that already, because you know who the real kidnappers are. Not this silly charade of the Consumers' Crusaders; we're talking about the client of your firm who is blackmailing you into getting your employer to dump Barclays shares and buy something else. Nod if I'm on the right track here."

John watched her eyes widen as Sherlock spoke. Then a frantic nod. The consulting detective did not release his gloved hand over her mouth. "I intend keeping this conversation away from the police, in the same way that you haven't been telling them the truth. To do that, I need your agreement to keep very quiet. Do you agree?"

Again, frantic nodding.

Sherlock took his hand away, but kept hold of the woman by her arms.

"Who are you?!" This was whispered, too. The woman was in her forties, shoulder length auburn haired and well dressed, wearing make-up but casual clothes.

"The name is Sherlock Holmes. I want to find your husband and get him away from the kidnappers. But, I will need your help to do that. You have to answer some questions with the truth."

"Holmes? Oh….aren't you that bloke who just got that stolen painting back? I read about it in the papers. You won't tell the police? You mustn't- they'll kill him."

"I know. That's why I want to help. The police will not be able to help you, but I can."

She pulled away and he let her go. She turned to look at him. And then John, with a question in her eyes.

"Um, I'm John Watson,  _Doctor_  John Watson. I'm with him." He whispered, too.

She sighed, and then looked back down the hall. "I've only got a bit of time. Nathan- that's my son- is hungry, so I came down to get him a sandwich." She opened a door from the main kitchen and beckoned them in. Sherlock swept in behind her and John followed, into what was a substantial walk-in larder, the walls lined with shelves stocked with food. From olive oil, exotic spices to a whole shelf of what must have been six different flours, almost as many brands of rice and as many as a dozen different pastas- the place looked like a delicatessen, apart from a row of kids cereals. In the corner, a wine fridge showcased dozens of bottles.

She looked scared but determined. "What do you know?" This was said in a normal speaking voice.

Sherlock replied instantly, "A lot, but not enough. I need the answers to a number of questions if we are going to be able to figure out where he is being kept."

"Ask."

"I know you are being targeted by one of your employer's clients. Do you know which one?"

She looked pained. "I don't know for  _sure_. But I think so. Albans Trust- it's an English client, worth just under a billion US; we only handle a bit of their business. They're heavily invested in HSBC. They've got motive. Barclays just pinched some of HSBC's premier wealth management clients."

"Tell me about them."

She sniffed. "A load of disgruntled bankers, or I should say,  _former_  bankers. Capital markets traders to be precise. From all sorts- JP Morgan, Goldmans, Banque Paribas- deal makers who got culled in the last round of redundancies- they all went off and set up a hedge fund together."

"How did they send the ransom demand?"

"I got it by e mail. They want me to trash the credit rating of Barclays, so my firm will dump the shares. They must have shorted a big position."

John was confused. He tried to connect what she was saying to electrical wiring and circuits. "Shorted? What do you mean?"

She rolled her eyes. "Sold shares they don't actually own. If the price falls before they actually have to deliver the shares, then they can buy them cheaper and pocket the difference. Used to be legal, but as of November, it will be controlled by EU regulations."

John was bewildered."How is it possible to sell something they don't own?"

She frowned. "You've obviously never heard of stock lending, flash trading or dark pools."

Sherlock gave her a knowing smile. "So, all this press coverage that's led to Barclays losing 8% off its share price…."

"Turns into a healthy profit for them. And they are still shorting the stock now- at levels that don't need to be reported. By getting my firm to divest ALL of our clients from Barclays, It will go down a damn-sight more than 8%- more like twenty to thirty percent. We have over $230 million in Barclays- but my guess is that they are targeting a whole lot more than that. They just need to get us to dump our shares, and everyone else in the market will run for cover too.

"How much are we talking about?"

"Who knows? I don't know how many shares they will have shorted, do I? And they will have spread it out between London and the New York Stock Exchange- it's listed on both. I do know that the the guys behind Alban Trust are clever. They're acting as a concert party, but working it through as many as eight or ten different stock exchanges. As much as I can figure, they're taking positions on their individual accounts, so they don't hit any reporting thresholds."

"Best guestimate?"

"Somewhere just shy of fifty million US- each, and there are dozens of them in the hedge fund."

John gave a low whistle in astonishment.

Sherlock was staring at the woman with forensic scrutiny. "Have you issued the revised credit analysis?"

"I have to do it by midnight tonight- that's 7pm on the East Coast, so the NYSE big board is closed."

Sherlock smirked. "But the Far East markets are just opening. Tokyo is where they will make their killing. And, of course, on all of the other banks' dark pools- which trade around the clock."

John was watching the woman's face. "I don't understand any of that- apart from the fact that it sounds like you are going to do what they say."

"What choice do I have? They've made it clear they will kill Nate if I don't. What else can I do?"

Sherlock shook his head. "Not yet; we still have seven hours. I intend making use of them."

"Do you know where my husband is being held?"

"What proof have they given you that he is actually alive?"

She gave a rueful smile. "Yes, I did ask for proof of life. It's what you're supposed to do, isn't it? I've been in touch privately with Hostage UK. They told me to do that this morning. The kidnappers phoned back with a video file of Nate." She unzipped her trousers and pulled an ultra slim phone from her the top of her pantyhose.

"If it was received on your phone, then surely the police know."

"I'm not stupid. This is a burn phone I bought on my way home from the office- registered in the name of my PA. I was working late last night. At ten thirty they sent me the ransom demand via my email account, which I had to delete as soon as I read it. So, the police never knew. They still think it's this crazy crusader guy. So, I used the burn phone to tell my PA to send them this phone number. They called me at nine this morning."

She scrolled down, swiped her finger across the screen twice and then thumbed the centre button, turning the phone so John and Sherlock could watch.

A slightly out of focus image of a man in formal dress wear came on. He looked scared and his nose was bloody. He held up a laptop on which a news service was playing. The phone zoomed in on the ticker- it was Bloomberg, announcing some M&A deal in Japan; the ticker across the bottom of the screen was dated and time-stamped as this morning at 8.45am.

Warren's voice came on, sounding tense and bit breathless. "Darling- they said you needed to hear me speaking. Just do what they say. They are going to kill me if you don't." His voice broke. "They say that if they throw my body on Barclays' steps in front of the press, it will have almost as much of an effect on the share price as it would if you issue the credit analysis." There was a sound of the phone being pulled back to show his bruised face again, above the rumpled and stained white shirt. The lapel of his dinner jacket was dusty, and he was tied tightly with ropes.

Her eyes teared up. "Oh, God, Mister Holmes, you've got to save him. I think even if I do as they say, they're going to kill him, because they don't want to be caught."

Sherlock looked impassively at the woman. John felt a twinge of sympathy with her despair as she looked on that pale demeanour. Then, a tiny quirk of his lip formed and then grew into a rather curious smile. "Oh, I don't think that's likely, because Doctor Watson and I are going to find him first. I've just spotted something important on that video."


	9. Chapter 9

Sherlock swooped and snatched the phone out of her hand, re-wound and started to play it again, peering at the video picture very close to the screen. He paused the recording, then smiled and handed the phone to john. "Look at the lighting."

John did as he was told, and Mrs Warren leaned to peer over his shoulder. "What am I supposed to be seeing?"

Sherlock's smile broadened. "The light from the left is natural light. He's not in a basement somewhere. What else can you tell about it?"

Ariadne answered. "It's sort of odd- shadows and daylight, slatted- like through blinds or something."

"Close but not quite. Try shutters. Rewind it and see if you two can catch a glimpse of the wall alongside him, just before the close up of the laptop screen."

She did as he said, and she and John watched as the hand that was holding the camera phone jostled it a bit as they walked closer to the screen. There was a split second where the wall to Warren's right was visible. She missed it, backed it up and played again so that it would stop at the very briefest of moments. An old dusty rope – with a section of strange blue, red and white towelling around it- was in view, coiled on a peg on what appeared to be a dull white wall. Then in the blink of an eye, the phone righted itself and the laptop screen came into focus.

"Recognise the rope?"

Both John and the woman shook their heads.

"Then you are not campanologists. That is a bell rope, and my money is on him being held hostage in a church bell tower."

While that might be true, it didn't seem to John to be worthy of that look of triumph that was now emerging from the consulting detective. "But which one, Sherlock? There are  _hundreds_  of churches in London. How do we know which have bells, and which one of those might have been used to hide a hostage?"

"That is the question, John. Fortunately, we have Love's Guide to the Bells of London." He looked around at the walls stacked with tins, and packages of fine food, as if seeing them for the first time. Then he frowned at the phone in his hand. "But unfortunately, I don't dare access it on my phone. Police surveillance will be on the nearest mobile mast, and they will be able to track the position of a call from this house and link it back to my phone. I really don't want to have to deal with Lestrade at this stage."

Ariadne had been following their exchange. "The mast? Oh my god, will the police have been able to track my call this morning to the kidnappers?!" Her alarm was clear.

Sherlock shook his head. "An unknown number will only show as within the cell footprint – that's an area with dozens of house. The next masts are both on Regents Park Road. You're safe, because your phone isn't recognised. Unfortunately, mine is. So, let me see yours, please."

Reluctantly, she handed it over. "You can borrow it, but you can't take it- I need it in case the kidnappers call again. And I will need it to publish the credit report. So, I'm not letting that out of my sight."

Sherlock was now trying to get a signal. Ariadne shook her head. "Not in here; out in the kitchen. I'll get Nathan's sandwich; he'll be wondering what's taking so long."

John followed him out and stood facing the hall and the stairs to the upper floors. Sherlock sat at one of the tall white chairs around an island unit. Mrs Warren opened the double door American style fridge and pulled out some ham, then rummaged about for butter, Branston pickle and some lettuce and tomato. She opened a chrome bread bin and pulled out two wholemeal slices.

The kitchen was all high tech glamour- like something out of an interior design magazine. Sherlock was oblivious, totally absorbed in whatever he was dragging down from the internet onto the phone. A couple of minutes later, Ariadne walked past John, carrying a plate with a sandwich in one hand and a glass of milk in the other. "I'll be back once I've delivered this. Please don't let him run off with that phone; it's my lifeline to Nate." She went up the stairs.

As soon as she disappeared, John asked a question- "Um, Sherlock. The client is called  _Alban_ ; could that have anything to do with that tower on Wood Street?"

"Unlikely. The bells were removed in 1965." He was swiping his finger repeatedly across the phone.

John drew in a breath in disbelief. "How do you  _know_  this stuff?"

That made Sherlock look up at him. "Cambridge. I learned how to ring bells in my first term there. Great combination of mathematics, logic and physical exercise. The train service to Liverpool Street on a student railcard made all the churches in the City affordable and easy to reach."

Yet again, John was astonished at the odd collection of hobbies that Sherlock seemed to have accumulated over his life time. His bedroom wall bore the evidence of his skill in both fencing and judo. The walls in 221b's living room held framed cases of beetles, moths and other exotica. Paintings and prints hinted at artistic inclinations- and, of course, there was the violin. But,  _bell ringing_? He'd always associated that with churchgoers and old people in moth-eaten cardigans.

He tried not to giggle. "Who would have guessed? You, a bellringer."

"It's a matter of public record, John, if you knew where to look;  _Ringing World_  registers the name of every person who rings a full peal, so my name would be there on three occasions."

Sherlock was still swiping his finger, but suddenly stopped. " _OH!_ "

"What is it?" John knew that something had just occurred- a seismic shift in Sherlock's thinking, where pieces of evidence that once seemed unrelated were now re-arranging themselves into a coherent story on the evidence board in his Mind Palace.

" _OH!_ "

 _TWO 'ohs'? That's… serious._  John decided that guarding the stairs was less important than trying to figure out what was going on.

"St Sepulchre". This was whispered, almost in awe.

"What? Is that a church?"

"Yes…and relevant, very relevant. It's on Holborn, almost directly opposite the Old Bailey. Newgate prison was there, too. The night before a hanging, the bellman left the church and went across to the condemned man's cell. He rang a hand bell twelve times and recited a verse." Sherlock stopped for a moment, and held up a hand to keep John silent.

Eventually, the consulting detective nodded. "Yes, I've found it-

_All that in the condemned hole do lie._

_Prepare you, for tomorrow you shall die;_

_Watch all, and pray: the hour is drawing near,_

_that you before the Almighty must appear._

_Examine well yourselves in time repent._

_That you may not to eternal flames be sent._

_And when St. Sepuichre´s Bell in the morning tolls._

_The Lord above have mercy on your souls_.*

"The verse is written beneath the hand bell on display in the church. I remember it."

"You've…been in that church?"

"Oh, yes; several times. And you surprise me, John, that you don't know it, because it has a chapel dedicated to the Royal Fusiliers' City of London brigade. It is also known as the Musician's church. I played in a concert there when I was at Harrow. The bell tower will have a board on the wall that lists my name as one of the ringers of a quarter peal of Cambridge surprise minor in 1997."

He exchanged startled looks with John. "The kidnappers have chosen that church, because of  _us._ "

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * This is real- the verse and the handbell. It is an extraordinary church, well worth a visit if you are ever in the area.


	10. Chapter 10

"You need to see this."

Moran cautiously poked his head around the bedroom door, to be greeted by the sight of Jim prancing in front of the 42 inch TV screen, a look of triumph on his face.

"Wall-to-wall coverage-  _soooo sweet_  of the hacks to stir people up for me."

Sebastian watched the broadcast switch from a close-up in the reporter to a crowd shot, panning across the massed ranks of protesters outside Barclays Bank's headquarters at Canary Wharf. The shouts of abuse were punctuated by waving placards: "Pay Up", "Greed Kills"; "Bonus Bastards". Some were hand-written; others looked professionally printed.

"Looks like a lynch mob to me," he said, somewhat distastefully.

"Offends your sniper's desire for a surgical strike, does it? Well, don't knock it, Tiger; it's 24/7 free advertising for yours truly." Jim was exultant and thumbed the remote's button to switch from the BBC to Sky News. Their reporter was also in front of a chanting mob, but this one was in a leafy London square lined with smart Georgian terraced houses.

The crowd was getting very vocal. "Pay up, Pay up, Pay up!" Jim pushed the volume until the sound filled the smart suite of the Rookery Hotel. They had moved there after reconnoitring the Bank of England. This hotel in the Smithfield Area of London was so discrete that most people didn't even know it existed. It suited Moran. And Jim didn't seem to mind the move. He got bored with places fairly quickly, so they had been on a regular schedule of movement, always under assumed names and totally untraceable corporate accounts.

Jim giggled. "I seem to have hit a nerve with the British public. What fun! Maybe we should stoke the fires up a little more. Wonder how hard I would have to push before bank bashing becomes an acceptable national sport? I'd  _love_  to see branch managers being dragged out of their offices to be tarred, feathered and paraded in shame down the country's high streets."

"Would the client approve of us getting involved again at this late a stage?"

Jim hit the mute button and turned to Moran with a scowl. "No  _us_  here, Tiger. Or is there someone else other than me with a brain in the room?" He made an exaggerated search, looking behind the curtains, lifting a cushion off the bed, as if to see if someone or something was hiding in the room. He then threw the cushion at Moran, who ducked just in time, as it flew by to smash into a dried flower arrangement which disintegrated into a mess. Without a backward glance, Jim threw himself onto the bed. "Don't be a spoilsport. I'm bored. Waiting for the Pentonville auction is getting tedious. In the meantime, we're just sitting around here watching daytime TV. Even this little soap opera is starting to get boring."

"The deadline is midnight. He'll be killed and we'll be able to move on."

Jim began to sing, "Lemons and oranges, say the bells of St. Clement's."

Sebastian frowned. "I get the reason why we planted the camera in that tower by the Bank of England, but what's your fixation with bells? Wouldn't it have been easier to lock him up in a bank vault? More poetic justice in killing him there."

"You have no poetry in your soul; you're a sniper. I, on the other hand, am a maestro." He continued to sing.

"You owe me five farthings, say the bells of St. Martin's.  
When will you pay me? Say the bells of Old Bailey.  
When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch."

Moran's frown deepened. Sometimes, he found Moriarty's impulsive musings disturbing. For a man whose criminal genius held him in a magnetic grip, Jim's behaviour sometimes baffled him. It was like dealing with a deadly animal- the constant tension kept Seb on his toes. Jim was a predator, in whose presence Moran needed every one of his instincts to survive. That living on a knife edge was part of the attraction, he had to admit. Once he'd left the war zones of central Asia, no occupation save this one had ever really appealed. He could exercise his unique profession as a sniper for Jim, knowing that no peacetime opportunity existed to anything like the same degree. The army had discharged him for going above and beyond the call of duty. Was it his fault that the pencil pushers back home did not appreciate the value of a targeted assassination programme? He'd not been forgiven for doing what the British army preferred giving to American drone operators, despite his arguments that there was far less collateral damage and civilian casualties. They were spineless.

Going private wasn't really an option either. Most so-called "hit men" were close quarters killers. "Wet work" was a euphemism for something rather boringly dreary. Dark alleys, knives, killing done without finesse- it offended his sense of artistry.

Better to work for a man who appreciated his talents. Jim Moriarty used him on only the best occasions. "I'm not going to waste you on something an illiterate thug could manage with his bare hands. No, no, no- little Tiger, I want you to stalk your prey, plan the moment and then breathe in and hold your heart beat for that marvellous moment- a kill shot at a thousand paces. Someone dispatched by you, acting on my orders, has been treated to the very finest. And everyone who appreciates such things will know it and see it for what it is- a statement of power and a token of respect."

Sebastian kept those words of Moriarty's close to his heart. He knew that Jim would never agree to have a personal bodyguard. The man liked to boast that he didn't need one; he was simply clever enough to avoid ever being caught by a disgruntled client. The contingency plans and dead man's switches protected Moriarty better than any close protection officer could; they were his insurance that no client, no competitor, no government would ever even contemplate removing Moriarty.

But Moran also knew that Jim liked having someone to applaud his genius, so no matter how much provocation the Irishman threw at him, a bit like that cushion, it was a fact that the Irishman tolerated no one else's companionship on a regular basis. It was times like these- when Jim was literally bouncing around the room- that Sebastian could be a voice of reason, slowing that mercurial mind down long enough to consider the consequences of his impulsiveness.

He tried again to get through to Moriarty's common sense. "The kidnappers don't care about artistry. All they want is a way to put the screws onto Barclays. So wasting time with bell towers- it's just not worth the effort."

"Well, they're idiots. Like most clients. They need me- but that also bores me. I need a bigger challenge." He took up the tune again:

"When will that be? Say the bells of Stepney.  
I do not know, says the great bell of Bow."

"Oh." Jim stopped singing and sat bolt upright. "Oh,  _that_  is a delicious idea."

"What?"

Jim was off the bed and into the living area of the suite, ignoring Sebastian completely, barging by him as if he wasn't even in the room. He grabbed a sheet of the hotel's expensive stationery and rapidly marked off a grid- twelve columns across- and wrote the numbers from one to twelve, from left to right in ascending order, as the first row. Then a second row- twelve numbers, but this time in a slightly different order.

"What are you doing?" Sebastian was intrigued.

No reply. The pen flew from left to write, filling in a row of numbers, one to twelve in a different order, each row.

Seb decided to risk an interruption. "I can't applaud if you don't tell me what you're doing."

"Ringing method. Quarter peal, 5040 changes in the order. Might call it  _Moriarty's Mayhem_. The trick will be in the bobs and touches. Only a mathematical genius will be able to follow them."

Seb stared at the growing number of rows, twelve numbers marching across the pad in a different order on every line. "If it's so complicated, then why bother? Who's it for?"

Jim sighed. "There are three people in the world smart enough to understand it, and only one of them is in this room. This is a little billet-doux to the Holmes Brothers. I'll send it after the hatchet man has done his job and the bad banker is dead. Then they'll know it was me behind the plot." He sniffed. "Well, an artist wants to sign his work, even if the audience is only two people." He started the next line of figures. "Now, go play with your rifle. Daddy needs to think."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is for the wonderful Anyawen who accompanied me for some on the research at St Sepulchre and Smithfields.


	11. Chapter 11

Sherlock realised that they had reached something of an impasse. John's arms were crossed and he had that  _I shall not be moved_  look in his eye. The chanting of the crowd in Chalcot Square had started up again and was loud enough to be heard even at the lower ground floor kitchen, at the back of the house. After his revelations about St Sepulchre, the doctor had started to call Lestrade about the church, but Sherlock's long lithe fingers reached around him to snatch the phone away and terminate the call.

"Trust me, John. A man's life is at stake, and the more people involved in organising his rescue, the longer it will take and the harder it will be to get him out alive."

There followed a long but silent exchange of looks between the two men, broken only when Ariadne came back down the stairs. She was teary-eyed and tense. "They've made another announcement." Switching on the TV on the kitchen wall, she used the remote to switch to the BBC News24 channel.

The newsreader had a serious look on her face. "The Barclays kidnap case took a dramatic turn moments ago, when this newsroom received the following message." The screen switched to a still shot of an e mail.

_To: The Chief Execution of Barclays Bank, c/o the BBC_

_From: The Consumers' Crusaders_

_Subject: DEADline_

_You've failed to follow instructions. If you don't pay up the ransom, here comes a candle to light you to bed, and here comes a chopper to chop off your head. You have until 9pm or Warren meets his fate._

The screen reverted to the newsreader. "The quotation comes from an old English nursery rhyme called the Bells of St Clements. Police are investigating whether there is any significance to its use."

As the news programme switched to another item, Ariadne angrily threw the remote onto the kitchen counter. "Please, you've got to do something. The deadline is now even earlier. I'm going to have to send out the credit analysis to investors in less than two hours."

Sherlock intervened first, before John could say anything. "Mrs. Warren, we need to leave now- the same way we came in. As you seem willing to keep the police out of this, please carry on with that policy. We're going to try to find the church that's in the ransom video. We'll be in touch when we make progress. If you get any further calls, please contact us." He grabbed the magnetic shopping list pad off the fridge door and scrawled his number on it.

Sherlock let John deal with the wife's anxieties; he was good at that sort of meaningless reassurance. As soon as he was out of the kitchen door, the sound of the chanting crowd in the square became more audible. He took one running jump onto the garden table and then vaulted over the brick wall.

" _Sherlock!"_

He couldn't be bothered to reply, knowing that John would follow. By the time he was halfway over the next garden's wall, he glanced back to see that John had managed to get over the first one. Five minutes later, John had only managed to catch up to the consulting detective because he was stuck on the kerb alongside Prince Albert's Road trying to flag down a cab. Finally, one came up the road, did a tight u-turn and pulled up. Sherlock threw himself into the back and pulled out his phone. He had work to do.

Still panting from the exertion of keeping up, John had just enough breath to pant, "We  _have_  to call Lestrade and tell him about the church."

"No." Sherlock focused his attention on his phone.

"Kidnappers have  _guns_ , Sherlock. We need back-up. They could kill the hostage, or us. Why not let the police sort it?"

"Because it will take too long to explain it all. This rescue…" Sherlock waved his hand dismissively, "…shouldn't be policing by committee." He glared out of the window at the red traffic signal that had stopped them. The cab was waiting to cross the intersection at Portland Square. "On our own, we have the element of surprise."

Looking uncomfortable, John muttered, "Tell the driver to stop off at Baker Street so I can get my gun."

"No. A detour just adds time that Warren doesn't have."

By the time the cab turned east onto the Euston Road, John's resistance had settled into a rather hostile acceptance that he wasn't going to be given a say in the matter.

Throughout the conversation, Sherlock kept his elation firmly in check, projecting instead an air of distracted focus. In the old days, he would be almost fizzing with excitement, unable to control the physical display of his eagerness. But now his new 2.0 Mind Palace was able to manage his outward behaviour whilst digesting the consequences of his latest discovery, on several different levels, all at once. It was a strange sensation- so much  _control_  over his external persona; it was like a whole different level of acting. For the first time since they had met, Sherlock knew that his acting was now able to fool John, too. As long as he stayed away from Mycroft, he was safe behind the new image. He'd first tried it out when dealing with the Russians and the Turner watercolour; now he was getting the real hang of it. The corelet structure meant he could manage his outward behaviour independently of what was going on in his mind, allowing him to process different streams of data simultaneously, without losing the threads that held events together.

The reason for the elation was simple:  _Moriarty's fingerprints are all over this one._  John had not realised it, and Sherlock was determined to ensure he didn't discover that fact.

Of course, he could solve the crime. In effect, he already had, whether or not Nathaniel Warren was rescued. But it was  _how_  he chose to solve the crime that would make all the difference. It was a test of his new confidence, his readiness to do battle, to deliver the long term strategic plan, rather than going for the quick hit. This was no "little game" designed by Moriarty to tease Sherlock. It was a thrown gauntlet. He would need to ensure that every single step of response was carefully thought through, to maximise the irritation of the Irishman.

 _This one is personal._ Unlike the five bombing victims, this crime was a private challenge. If he could solve it, free the captive and expose the real kidnappers, he would need to do it in a way that made the failure so blatant to the man's clients, to his own people, that it would damage that reputation as a criminal mastermind- without letting anyone else know about the true complexity of the crime.

The Sigursson plan required such an approach. Sherlock had to keep control of events if he was to ensure that solving this crime did not threaten his deal with Elizabeth Ffoukes. Would he be able to keep her ignorant of the Irishman's involvement? He would have to try. He didn't want to have to tell her any more than the bare necessity, lest the 'powers that be' try to argue that his strategy was too risky. So far, he'd been able to keep Mycroft confined to the side lines on this; too much flamboyance now might make it hard to keep him there.

So, with a new found patience, Sherlock plotted the best way to solve the crime. By the time they turned onto Charterhouse Street from Farringdon Road, he had outlined a plan, but he didn't tell John. Somehow, he didn't think the doctor would approve.

oOo

**19.11 Warren is being held in Bell Tower of St Sepulchre, Holborn. Proceed with due caution; we're already on site. DO NOT GET SNOW HILL INVOLVED. SH**

As Sherlock finished typing his text to Lestrade, he looked at John. "Ready?" The pair was now standing on the pavement outside the church. He had explained that the Snow Hill police station was too close for comfort- less than fifty meters away. He didn't want any policeman plod getting involved in the extraction- they were to be used only as back up and so had to arrive in another ten to fifteen minutes.

The doctor gave the briefest of nods and watched Sherlock hit the send button.

"The hostage is being held on the top floor- where the bells were actually hung." He pointed to the top two sets of windows. "The shutters we spotted on the phone video are there not to keep out light- but to keep pigeons from roosting amongst the bells."

"The ringing chamber is between us and the hostage. That's the room underneath; it's the one that has its own stained glass window." As John looked up, Sherlock continued, "that's where the kidnappers are likely to have set up their guard."

The pair slipped behind the church and came to a door at the base of the tower. It was gloomy and the twilight made it even darker, but at least that gave them the cover Sherlock needed to pick a skeleton key lock. "Old churches have old keys. Let's hope it's well oiled."

A couple of minutes later, the latch gave way. Sherlock moved the heavy oak door inwards very, very slowly. "…and the hinges can squeak, too." Fortunately, this one didn't.

Once inside, Sherlock switched on his pocket torch, then strode across the hall to a wooden door. "This is the way to the ringing chamber." This one had a simple Yale lock, which he picked in moments. As the door opened, Sherlock turned to John and whispered.

"This is a stone spiral staircase no wider than a big man's need to stand guard down here. Tell the police when they come what's going on. There's only room for one person to come up or go down, so as long as you are down here, the kidnappers cannot escape."

" _SHERLOCK!?_ You can't be serious. You are  _not_  going up there on your own!" This was uttered in an outraged stage whisper.

"Yes, I am. With one, it will be less likely that they will shoot first."

And with that, Sherlock started up the stairs, leaving a dumbfounded John at the bottom. Despite how he'd been intent on whispering to John, Sherlock now made no attempt to mask the sound of his shoes, but then, he  _wanted_  to be heard by the occupants of the bell tower.


	12. Chapter 12

"Who are you and what're you doing up here?" The man standing on the narrow stone spiral stair outside the ringing chamber was trying, but failing, to keep the belligerence out of his tone of voice.

"I'm a bellringer. Who are  _you_  and what are you doing in this tower?"

"A  _bellringer_?" The kidnapper was bigger than Sherlock- too tall and bulky to have been comfortable going up and down the stairs. Sherlock had to be very careful to avoid banging his head. The only place in the two storey climb that he'd been able to stand upright properly was at the half way point, where there was a tiny landing of about four feet- alongside the wall of the main body of the church where the West window of stained glass was. And steps were narrow- hard for big feet to get a good purchase, the stone worn smooth by centuries of use.

Sherlock rolled out the gormless geek disguise, and hope it would do. "Uh, yeah?! This is a bell tower, or hadn't you noticed? No one is allowed up here without the tower captain's permission. That's me, by the way, and I don't recall anyone asking my permission. So, who are you and what are you doing up here?"

The kidnapper was uncertain about what to do. Sherlock could see the man thinking, almost as if he was watching the gears turn. If the man's reaction was too aggressive, then a bell ringer would get suspicious, and the Snow Hill police station was only fifty feet away. If he failed to have a plausible excuse, however, then he would find it difficult to stop Sherlock from climbing the last six steps to push past him and into the ringing chamber.

Sherlock watched as the man came to consider the third option- lure him up there and then take him hostage, too. He was counting on that one being the choice. He needed to get into the chamber to assess how difficult it would be to free the bound captive. He also needed to know how many kidnappers there were.

Below him on the stairs, there was a faint sound, which he quickly masked by scuffing his own shoe on the stone and taking the next step up. He knew with a high degree of certainty that John was now at the half-way point, having defied his instructions to stay on the ground floor. He was counting on that, too. John had to be close enough to be able to hear, but inhibited from coming any nearer.

He decided to take the initiative- the kidnapper was taking too long. "Look- I don't know who you are, but I need to get up to the bells. The treble's rope jumped the wheel last week, and I have to fix it before practice night tomorrow at eight o'clock."

There was a frisson of confusion on the thug's face, leading Sherlock to deduce that the kidnappers had not known enough about bellringing to realise that it would be in regular use.

"Not possible," came the adlibbed reply. "Building works- it's unsafe. Tower's closed." The man crossed his arms and stood like a roadblock.

"No, it isn't." Sherlock called his bluff, came up the two steps at blinding speed and then dodged a hastily thrown arm to get into the ringing chamber, before the man had a chance to grab him. The bulky man had to duck to come through the door behind him, by which time Sherlock had realised that no one else was in the room. _Two or three kidnappers only; one here and one or two above._  A single glance also told him that the bells were up- ready to ring, in anticipation of the practice night that normally occurred every week on the next evening.  _Good, that makes this even easier._

Just as the guy behind him reached in his jacket pocket for what Sherlock presumed would be a gun, the consulting detective spun on his heel and slapped the man with both hands, hard on his ears. Instinct made the man draw back to protect his head, and that was enough time for Sherlock to lash out with his left foot, kicking him viciously in the knee. There was a satisfying crunch and he let out a howl of pain. Before his opponent could bring his gun to bear, Sherlock grabbed the nearest rope and gave it an almighty pull. The sound of a bell rang out, just as John came charging into the room, grabbing the kidnapper from behind and pulling him down. Two punches later, the gun spun out of the kidnapper's fingers and was kicked by the army doctor into the corner of the square room. Another punch from the doctor, and it was all over.

Even before John had got into the room, Sherlock was already thinking about the other kidnappers. While the doctor took care of the first thug, Sherlock was in motion, moving to each to the other eleven hanging ropes and pulling the bells off with a sharp tug. The noise became a cacophony of uncoordinated clanging, and the ropes jerked and whipped around in the tower, as the bells rang of their own accord, without someone to keep them under control.

Sherlock came up to John and leaned over so he could shout in the doctor's ear to be heard over the noise. "Tie him up with his belt. Stay down here until I give the all-clear." Without a backward glance, he went up the spiral staircase again to the next floor, moving quickly past the door, as the steps went on up toward the roof. From several steps up, he cautiously pushed against the top of the door with his foot, only to be rewarded by the sound of a gunshot- barely audible over the sound of the bells at full volume. A chip of stone from the staircase was thrown by the bullet which ricocheted to the left, and then dust drifted down the spiral steps. He waited.

The sound of twelve bells ringing out of control was deafening, and to the kidnapper and his victim in the bell chamber, their movement must have been deeply alarming after two days of taking for granted the fact that their huge bulk was stationary.

Sherlock knew the bell tower well; he'd broken a rope at the start of the peal he'd rung here as a university student, and had to climb up to replace it before they could proceed. The twelve bells were stacked in a heavy steel and wood frame, and even the lightest of them weighed several hundred pounds of cast brass. The sight of these hunks of metal whirling about on their wheels at great speed would be frightening even without the sound. The heaviest bell was the weight of a small car, and the deep bong that it made would cause physical pain to anyone standing in the vicinity. Put eleven more bells' noise into the mix and it would drown out a rock concert at full volume. It was only a matter of time before the man broke cover.

He took a deep breath and tried to control his own reaction to the huge noise. His Sensory Processing Disorder had caused him some problems at the start of his ringing career; he'd had to learn to deal with the volume. But, because the bells were in tune, and he'd had two years to build up his tolerance of the noise, he figured that the kidnappers would break first. He moved further up the staircase, until he was just able to peer around the first bend to see the doorway.

When a hand cautiously emerged from the door, holding a gun pointing down the stairs, Sherlock dropped on him like a stone. Sherlock grabbed for the gun, trying to take advantage of the momentary shock of his weight as it took the breath out of the man he landed on, and squashed the kidnapper against the stone stairs. The two men, tangled into a single writhing mass started to tumble down the stairs.

He was lucky. On the second turn of the spiral, the kidnapper's head collided with the side of the stone stairwell, smacked there by the force of not only his own weight, but that of Sherlock, too, as they bounced their way down. When the tangled pair eventually came to a stop, jammed in the bend, the consulting detective was bruised but conscious; the kidnapper was not moving. The gun was no longer in the man's hands; presumably it had fallen further down the staircase.

John came up the staircase, and Sherlock could see that he was trying to say something, but the noise of the bells drowned him out. The consulting detective wriggled free of the bulk of the kidnapper, slipping out of the Belstaff that was trapped beneath the man's legs. The kidnapper's unconscious form blocked the staircase like a stopper in a bottle; John could not get past him, so Sherlock was on his own. Without a backward glance, he clambered back up the staircase and into the bell chamber.

The sight that greeted him was like something from a Hammer Horror film. Nathaniel Warren was tied to a stanchion of the bell frame. Inches from his head, the huge tenor bell swung on its wheel. His mouth was taped shut; his eyes terrified. With good reason, as the third kidnapper was holding a large meat cleaver to Warren's throat.


	13. Chapter 13

"Sherlock."

"Hmmm?"

"Are you going to tell me what really happened up in the tower?"

That question made Sherlock look up from the fireplace, where his gaze had been firmly fixed for the past hour, watching the flames and drinking the endless cups of tea that John kept providing. He'd said almost nothing since returning to Baker Street just before dawn. It was too late, or too early, depending on one's point of view, to bother going to bed. Something in his back popped a complaint, as John stood up and opened the curtains to let the first glimmer of daylight into the room. The hours of de-briefing at the Yard had clearly taken a toll on both men.

"Does it really matter?"

"Yes." John gave it his  _hands-on-hips, we-are-going-no-further-unless-you-explain_  tone of voice.

Sherlock must have heard it, because he sighed. Then, "The hostage was rescued, one kidnapper is dead, one is in hospital and the other in custody. More important, the real criminals can now being arrested. And in a few hours, people will wake up to realise that this ridiculous consumers' crusader is just a figment of the media's imagination."

The doctor was not mollified by the "happy ever after" ending that Sherlock had just painted. He'd seen the gory mess that was left of the dead kidnapper. Warren had been all but coated in the guy's blood. Sherlock, too, which had caused John one heart-stopping moment when he came into the belfry, before he realised that his friend was apparently unharmed and was busy untying the banker.

"Sherlock, the kidnappers were real. So were their guns. So, what actually  _happened_  up there? By the time I got past the guy who was blocking the staircase, it was all over up there."

"You heard what I said to Lestrade. The kidnapper in the belfry didn't have a gun; he just had the meat cleaver that he was going to use to decapitate Warren. I was able to stop him. End of story."

John resisted rolling his eyes. He knew that Sherlock was avoiding the question, probably because he knew John wouldn't like the answer. So, he dropped his voice a register and growled, "I want to know  _how_  the kidnapper ended up  _dead_."

That got him a dismissive sniff. "Bells are dangerous. He didn't understand that. You saw for yourself that there's not a lot of room up there. The tenor bell's stay broke, and a piece of wood split off and was thrown into the kidnapper's back. It was not enough to kill, but it certainly distracted him enough that I could tackle him. He fell backwards into the path of the swinging bell. A skull cannot win against a bell that weighs over a tonne. He died instantly, if rather messily. The hostage was fine because he was actually tied to the frame, and so out of danger."

"Why did the …what did you call it? The stay? What is that and why did it just happen to break then?"

"It's the piece of wood that stops the wheel that holds the bell from going all the way over; it's what gives the ringer the ability to control the bell. Because no one was holding the end of the rope downstairs, there was just too much pressure on the wood, and it smashed to pieces."

"In other words, you got lucky."

"Technically speaking, it was the hostage who got lucky."

"If it hadn't happened, then he could have been decapitated by a nutter with a meat cleaver."

"Well, we won't know, will we? Because it didn't happen that way. I pulled the bells off downstairs when I was with you, knowing that uncontrolled ringing is dangerous. I took advantage of the situation and saved the hostage. Isn't that what you would call a victory? The police seem to think so."

"You don't get it, do you? You charged up there, leaving me behind with not one but two of the kidnappers' guns."

"A gun wouldn't have helped. At best a standoff- the kidnapper would have the cleaver at the hostage's throat. No matter how good a shot you are, John, you would not have been willing to risk it."

"And just what would you have done if the bell hadn't solved the problem for you?"

"That question is pointless, John. I won't waste breath on a hypothetical. What happened, happened." He lapsed back into silence, staring at the fire.

John gave up. He poked up the fire a bit more because he was cold and then sank into his own chair. It had been a long night. His first priority in the tower had been the kidnap victim, who was blood soaked, exhausted and terrified. Warren had been tied up for two days without food or water, and was in a state of shock; once John got the tape off his mouth, he helped rub some circulation back the banker's legs. The bells had finally managed to ring themselves down and were now silent again, which helped John talk to Warren and get him on his feet.

The first PC up the stairs managed to move the bulk of the unconscious kidnapper into the ringing room; the thug was breathing, but had a nasty bruise forming on the left side of his head. Sherlock bolted down the stairs as fast as he could, stopping only long enough to grab his Belstaff while Sally Donovan got the belt off the kidnapper who'd woken up from John's knock-out punch. She cuffed him before escorting him down the stairs in front of her. When John and Warren passed by the ringing chamber on their way down the stairs, the paramedics were arguing about how best to get the unconscious man down the stairs of a spiral staircase.

Once John guided Warren all the way down to the ground floor, the banker was whisked off to hospital with a police escort, to be checked over. Then he helped deal with the unconscious kidnapper, who was coming down the tower strapped to a back-board sliding along the stairs, as if he were in a helter-skelter.  _Whatever works._ John had evacuated wounded soldiers from more difficult positions- at least no one was shooting at this patient.

By the time the second ambulance's door was shut and it took off down Holborn Viaduct, John could hear Sherlock telling Lestrade that the blood he was wiping off his face and hair wasn't his, followed by what had happened in the tower at rapid gunfire speed. As John approached the pair, he could see that Lestrade was trying to get a word in edgewise, but Sherlock was at full tilt. When he finally had to take a breath, the Met DI grabbed his arm, and said "Just  _shut up_ for a minute, will you?"

Startled by the DI, Sherlock hesitated, allowing Greg to ask, "How the  _hell_  did you figure out it was this church, and why the  _fuck_ didn't you call us in before charging over here?" He was livid. John had some sympathy with his reaction.

Sherlock just shrugged off Greg's hand and stepped back, before answering, "Figured out the location from a discussion with Mrs Warren. Didn't have time to explain that to you, because I was too busy finding him before the deadline at nine pm turned into a dead hostage. Bluffed my way into the tower to find three kidnappers and one hostage. The kidnapper at the top is dead- accidental, by the way- and now we need to stop wasting time talking about this and get to the Yard so we can deal with the  _real_  criminals- there is not a moment to lose." He started to turn away towards one of the cars, but stopped when he realised that Lestrade was not following.

"Problem?"

"Hold your horses, Sherlock. I can't leave- there is a crime scene to process, including a dead body. I need to interview the two suspects as well as Warren as soon as he's cleared by the hospital."

"No, you don't. He knows less about this than I do. The kidnap is a side show; the main event is happening right now in Tokyo and New York, and if we don't get going, you'll be too late to stop a far bigger crime than kidnap." He turned on his heel and marched over to the back of the nearest police car, and slid into the back seat.

Greg exchanged startled looks with John. "Please tell me you know what's going on?"

The doctor grimaced. "I'm having troubles following the high finances, but he and Mrs Warren had one of those too-technically-complicated-for-normal-mortals-to-understand conversations and here we are."

Greg pursed his lips and then decided. "Well, if he thinks it's urgent enough to be willing to go in the back seat of a police car…." He looked over at the consulting detective who was now using his phone and texting. "He  _never_  goes in a police car.….Donovan!" He shouted out to Sally, who was talking to the forensic teams getting suited up. "You're in charge of the crime scene. I'm heading back to the office."

The whole way to the Yard, Sherlock was texting on his phone.

"Who are you texting?"..."What are you doing?"

Both Lestrade's and John's questions were fired at Sherlock almost simultaneously, as the police car slew sideways to avoid a car that didn't yield as they entered Victoria Embankment from the Blackfriars roundabout.

"Getting the right people to New Scotland Yard- you won't be enough, Lestrade." The consulting detective didn't even look up.

Whomever and whatever he texted, it worked. Within ten minutes of getting to the Yard, while Sherlock washed the blood off and changed into a borrowed shirt, people started arriving at the main briefing room- the same one that had been used to hold the press conference about the kidnap. A white board was rolled in, and Sherlock came in with rolled up sleeves and started downloading data files he had stored on the internet, printing off materials which he stuck up on the board. He used a blue marker pen to draw links between the photos and printed screen grabs, occasionally annotating them with a packet of bright pink post-it-notes that he pulled out of his trouser back pocket. Within minutes, John recognised most of what had been on the Baker Street wall, but now there was a  _lot_  more data.

The doctor just stood watching Sherlock as the briefing room began to fill up. Nearly a dozen officers from the City Police, even more from the Met's Kidnap Unit and Lestrade's own team were joined by officials from the London Stock Exchange, and the Financial Services Authority. Representatives from the Tokyo and New York Stock Exchange then telephoned and linked in on live conference call lines. The Barclays people came in last, to stand by the side of the room.

As soon as the bank team arrived, Sherlock started to reveal the details of the plot. He started with the minute-by-minute abduction, the van appearing and then disappearing, then Warren being moved to three different cars before ending up no more than a mile from where he was first snatched. If the size of the crowd watching bothered him, he didn't let on. The consulting detective used the evidence board as his focus, turning his back on the increasingly incredulous audience. "Finding and rescuing Warren was only the first step, and in some ways, the easiest," Sherlock explained.

The scale of the crime was awesome, and the usual banter and chatter of an investigation room drifted into silence as Sherlock kept producing the facts about the criminals' plan to short shares, shift markets and confuse the media. Despite the fact that he was talking to the board, and had his back to the audience, all eyes were on Sherlock as the data came flooding out. As he spoke, he kept writing up fact after fact- including the names of the co-conspirators, now linked to photographs, and the shocking amounts of money involved in the scam. John realised that their kitchen conversation with Mrs Warren must have given Sherlock what he needed to draw out the full plot, even though neither she nor the doctor had understood the full picture.

"You will have to co-ordinate your arrests of the seventeen suspects in three countries, and take action in a further six stock exchanges across the world to unwind the options contracts they placed." He finally turned around to scan the faces for one he recognised- James Poole, the Director of Communications for Barclays. Making eye contact for the first time, he went on. "You'll need to coordinate a three centre simultaneous press release to reassure Barclays' investors in London, New York and Tokyo. If the markets are sensible, the share price will recover to previous levels, and there won't be any long term consequences for the financial instruments based on the market indices, which have been moved by this plot."

There were nods from both the Bank of England and FSA representatives, one of whom spoke up. "Thank God someone understood the ramifications of all this. If the police had just announced Warren's release without thinking about the markets, all hell would have broken loose. And the people behind this would have had the chance to dump the shares, terminate the index contracts and cover their tracks. By delaying publication, we have a fighting chance."

Sherlock shot Lestrade a triumphant  _I-told-you-so_  look. "This is what has to be done next." He reeled off instructions- warrants would be needed and market actions co-ordinated, to catch the real culprits. And the clock was ticking. The Tokyo market would be open for another six hours, then London would open two hours after Tokyo closed, followed six and a half hours later by the NYSE opening. All through the night and next morning, share options would also be moving in and out of the dark pools, where off-market trading between banks and brokers took place. Utmost secrecy was needed, if the culprits were not to learn of what was going on, until it was too late. Sherlock made clear what had to happen, by whom, and when, drawing up a detailed timeline.

Finally, he came to a halt, putting the cap back onto the blue pen marker. "That's me done. Now it's your turn, gentlemen." Sherlock slipped his coat back on and heading for the stairs without a backward glance. John grabbed his own jacket and followed, as people got to work.

Now back in the comfort of Baker Street, John decided that he'd had enough of trying to get Sherlock to recognise that his willingness to take risks was a bit not good. In the great scheme of things, luck seemed to be on the side of the consulting detective, and the hostage had been freed.  _All's well that ends well._

"Oh, by the way, however much luck was involved in the tower, that has to be the biggest and most complicated case you've ever solved. Amazing." He opened his laptop. "Shall we watch the press conference? I'd like to blog about this one."

"Yes, John. This time I need to make sure that I get some of the public credit."

"Why?"

"Because you never know who might be watching."


	14. Chapter 14

Jim was still pacing. He'd spent most of the night shouting at the television. The 24 hour news on the television screen in the background kept pumping out speculation about the fate of the Barclay's director, as the deadline came and went.

"Eejits. Effing cafflers. Fecking  _tubes_!"

As the night progressed, Moran watched with some considerable dismay Jim's descent into rage. The more obscure swear words favoured by the northern Irish were the truest sign of his boss's total wrath.  _He will start smashing something any moment now._

As if he'd heard the sniper's inner dialogue, at midnight on the dot Moriarty turned and grabbed the ice bucket and threw it against the wall- champagne bottle and all. The ice cubes had melted; the water was now tepid, because they had been waiting so long for the news that the decapitation had taken place. After that confirmatory phone call, Moriarty had been planning to kick off his own private stock market shopping spree, taking advantage of the market chaos to make a substantial deposit into his criminal consultancy's funds. "No point in not dipping our noses into the trough, too; these amateurs are not paying me enough to warrant any respect." When the champagne first arrived at 8.45, Jim had gleefully directed the waiter to set the champagne and a single glass on the coffee table in front of the huge TV screen. Smirking as he paid the waiter a generous tip, he'd said, "Well, sorry, little Tiger, but you haven't exactly contributed enough to merit a glass of your own."

That was hours ago. Now, the celebrations were definitely off. But neither Moriarty nor Moran knew with any certainty just how seriously awry the plans had gone. They were caught in a limbo. No news was bad news, but neither knew just how bad. None of the kidnappers were answering their phones, and neither were the clients in America who had commissioned the whole thing on behalf of the English hedge-fund. Not knowing was eating a hole in Moriarty's sanity.

By two o'clock, the mutterings were taking more definitive shape. "I am surrounding by incompetence. What is  _soooo_  difficult about chopping someone's head off? Hmmm, tell me that, Tiger? Not like one of your kill shots; no artistry involved. Just dumb, brute force. The man has been tied up like a sacrificial lamb for days, ready for the cleaver and yet, we don't know whether he's still able to wear a tie. These incompetents are as useless as a back pocket in a shirt."

Jim was not a patient man. Sebastian knew it to be his only real weakness. Despite the strangely manic behaviour, behind that façade was a mind that was always, always in control. While perfectly capable of playing the long game and building a plot over months, even years, it was the  _not knowing_  that his boss hated. His brain moved at such speed that having to wait for the rest of the world to catch up was positively painful.

"The fecking holdup's enough to make me chuck in this consulting criminal lark. I swear that these days if I want something done properly, I have to do it myself."

At times like these, Moran preferred to keep his head down. Even a simple question could become a lightning rod, conducting all that wrath towards whatever drew Jim's attention. But, despite the fact that he knew better, after five o'clock, the silence of waiting was just impossible to bear. Finally he tried a placatory comment. "Maybe the police have just imposed a press silence- you know, to keep the death quiet until they can identify the victim. It would be hard if they don't have a head, I think."

Jim stopped pacing and stared at Sebastian. "Noooooo. Not possible.  _You_  don't think. Ever. Numpty, I don't give a flying feck what the police do; one of those three eejits would have phoned to tell us by now if they'd done the deed. Even if their phones had died or couldn't get a signal, they'd get the message to us. Sent up a smoke signal, rung the bloody church bells. Otherwise, they don't get paid. And as greed is the gobdaw's motivation, at least one of them would have let us know if they could."

The phone in Jim's pocket came to life, with the BeeGees'  _Staying Alive_. He grabbed it, anticipation on his face- which then faded, to be replaced by a look of grudging surprise. He muttered, "Well, at least  _someone_  cares." He swiped to open a screen and read a text.

Moran raised his brows in a silent question, knowing that Jim would be able to pick up the gesture in his peripheral vision.

"From Sigurson. Wants to know if there is any private news not yet on the public news. Or whether he can be of any help on Plan B."

Seb was startled enough by that information to blurt out, "How does  _he_  know what's going on?"

That raised the first smile in hours from Jim. "Don't be jealous, Seb. Unlike you, the Viking is a man with a brain, and he isn't afraid to use it. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that a plot this big is likely to have my fingerprints on it. Text says that he's been tracking one of the St Albans guys- former Skandia Bank guy in Oslo who's getting twitchy at no news about the headless chicken. Keeps asking Sigurson if he knows anything." He looked up from his phone, throwing a glance at the sniper. He made a shooing gesture with his hand. "So, off you go- dig up some information." Moran watched, as Jim started typing a reply on his phone.

 _Sigurson_. The Norwegian was getting on the sniper's nerves. First the Turner watercolour, and now he was sticking his oar in on this case. Most unsatisfactory. He would have to invent a plausible excuse to go pay the man a visit, and tell him to stop trying to curry favour with Jim, or he'd find himself on the wrong end of a rifle's cross-hairs. Moran glared at the TV, as if to blame it for not telling him what he needed to satisfy Moriarty. That earned him a roll of Jim's eyes. "Oh, for shite's sake, do what every other human being does when the police are trying to keep a lid on something- go check out twitter."

Seb opened the laptop and signed in as BRASS-F, the acronym used for the mental checklist during firing: breathe, relax, aim, stop, squeeze, follow-through. The hashtag #consumerscrusader was trending in the UK, as bank customers had been tweeting all night about what they were going to spend 'their' £87 on buying. The public clearly thought that the bank had caved in, the ransom would be paid, and that it was all a bit of a lark. A minority took a different view, with rumours running wild- a headless body had been thrown on the steps of Barclays' HQ in Canary Wharf; a head without a body had been seen being rolled into the police station on Wood Street. He kept updating Moriarty as they waited.

And waited.

"Do we break camp and cut our losses?" That was Moran's question at four. Jim just shook his head.

At six Moriarty muttered. "I'm not moving a muscle until I know whose bollocks are going to get cut off. Then we'll check out and disappear. None of the St Albans bankers really know who they are dealing with. I've used a Grand Cayman cut-out that no one can trace back to me."

Moran went back to waiting. It was something he was used to doing. Sometimes, waiting for a target to come into the kill zone took days. If Moriarty wasn't worried, then he wasn't.

Room service delivered a pot of coffee at seven o'clock. The waiter blanched slightly at the sight of the ice bucket on the floor and the unopened but unbroken bottle of champagne on the damp carpet, before calmly picking it up and putting them both back on the side table in the suite's living area. He scuttled off without a word.

A sharp whistle from Jim a half hour later made Seb break off from his twitter work. The TV news had started running a Breaking News ticker- the Metropolitan and City Police forces had called a joint news conference for eight o'clock. When the TV cameras were switched on for live broadcast a few minutes early, the two men could see journalists crammed into every nook and cranny of the briefing room at New Scotland Yard. They were wearing sombre faces, clearly expecting the worst. Moran's hopes rose. They watched as three men in suits entered the room, followed by a black woman officer and another uniformed PC. They were both carrying a large pile of briefing folders. The effect on Jim was startling; he sat up and whispered, "Oh, his Met Minder!" in barely suppressed excitement.

"What?" Moran was confused.

" _Quiet_. Keep that flapping trap of yours shut."

From the table at the front of the room, the silver haired detective kicked off. "I'm Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade, and this is DCI Mattison from the City of London Police force. We've been working together on this case. Last night at eight forty three pm, Nathaniel Warren was rescued from his kidnappers."

"He is alive and well and with his family now, following a thorough debriefing. Three men who abducted and held Mister Warren were apprehended; one died on the scene, one is in hospital suffering from a fractured skull, an injury incurred during the rescue. The third is in custody and helping us with our inquiries. Mister Warren has been checked by medical professionals and pronounced fit enough to be discharged, but his mistreatment at the hands of his kidnappers mean that it will be some time before he can return to work."

As he drew a breath to continue, reporters started to shout questions. The loudest journalist- from the Daily Mail- bellowed over the rest, "Have you arrested the Consumers' Crusader?"

DCI Mattison took up the story. "There never was such a person. The whole thing is a fabrication of a group of financial criminals, an organised and sophisticated international gang operating together to manipulate the world stock markets. The reason for the silence between when Warren was rescued last night and now was so we could arrest the perpetrators who were in New York and Tokyo, as well as London, and to allow the markets to re-open in an orderly fashion. Barclays has just issued a statement as the London market opened a few minutes ago. Regulators and stock exchanged all around the world are working to identify the fraudulent trades. The transactions involved that we have identified so far totalled over $400 million in stock options, all of which needed to be unwound. There will be more."

There was a gasp in the room as the figure sank in. Harris of the Daily Mail followed up his question with another. "So, the £1.6 billion bonus ransom demand was…what, a joke?"

"No, it was designed to attract the media's attention so that the share price of Barclays would fall. And you media certainly obliged. You were duped into serving the interests of the kidnappers, who manipulated you just as they did the stock price."

Moran risked a sideways glance at Moriarty, to see what effect the news was having on the man. What surprised him utterly was that instead of being beside himself in rage, a knowing smile was starting to form on the Irishman's face. Then, softly, under his breath, he whispered, "Oh, you beauty. You've  _excelled_  yourself this time."

The journalists were clamouring for attention. Then DCI Mattison picked out one- John Gapper of the Financial Times, who spoke up from his seat. "Who figured it out? How did the police realise that it was so sophisticated a plot?"

Lestrade spoke up. "We called in a consultant. He actually found and rescued Warren, acting independently of the police. We understand that the three men apprehended last night were responsible for abducting and holding Warren, but they were acting on the instructions of the financial criminals. The consultant is also the person who uncovered the details of the financial plot, helping the market authorities and police forces in three countries to work together to arrest sixteen of the seventeen perpetrators. One suspect is still on the run. We owe Mister Sherlock Holmes a debt of gratitude that can't be repaid."

Moran snarled, " _HOLMES!_ That bastard  _again_ …you really should have let me put a bullet into him at the pool. He's been nothing but trouble ever since."

"I said  _quiet_! I want to hear this." Moriarty was leaning forward on the edge of the sofa, his face alight with anticipation.

Someone in the back shouted out "Will  _he_  be getting a bonus from Barclays then?" There was laughter in the room.

Lestrade shook his head. "Mister Holmes never accepts payment for the work he does with the Police."

The reporter from the Sun piped up, "Then aren't you the lucky ones? Working for free- what a hero. But we have mortgages to pay, so come on- give us the full story."

"I'll pass you over to my Detective Sergeant Sally Donovan and DC John Chapman from the Metropolitan Police Kidnap Unit who will talk you through the details of the kidnap rescue, before asking DCI Dwyer from the Specialist Financial Crime Operations team to explain the scale of the operation in the London and overseas markets. " Lestrade stepped back from the microphone, as the piles of briefing folders were handed out.

Jim was still smiling as he switched off the television. "Well, well, well- that was almost worth missing out on a stock market killing." He giggled. "Round two to Sherlock. This is going to make life even more interesting."


	15. Epilogue

"You're sure?" John was putting the finishing touches on his blog post- "Banker in the Belfry" was the title.

"Yes."

"They seem a little…provocative."

"Yes. Precisely. I want Mycroft to know that he can't get away with shutting me out of cases."

Sherlock generally ignored what John posted on his blog or commented sarcastically, but this time he had volunteered to help. John's writing might be overblown and silly at times, but it had its value in promoting his role in the case, especially when Sherlock knew for a fact that the blog was being monitored by both Mycroft and Moriarty. He wanted every bit of publicity he could wring out of the situation. While he  _enjoyed_  rubbing Mycroft's nose in the situation, he  _needed_  to get Moriarty both annoyed and intrigued at the same time. Of course, he couldn't tell John that fact; ignorance was bliss, in his case. To him, the Irishman was just a nutter who played deadly bombing games. He had no idea the scale of the world-wide operation that Sherlock had started to uncover in his disguise as Lars Sigurson. And Sherlock intended keeping it that way. So, he misdirected John's interest by saying it was to annoy Mycroft.

In the confines of his Mind Palace, he'd been thinking about how best to make sure it helped build the pressure on the consulting criminal to the point where he would break cover. So, he was happy to give John a couple of "quotable quotes" for the blog. The first was designed to provoke the press:

" _The media are so easy to manipulate by criminals because they can no longer afford the cost of proper, ethical journalism. The criminal who masterminded this case should be investigated by journalists with the same rigor as his victims, the bank and its banker."_

It wouldn't happen. Sherlock knew the limitations of the media; unless material was presented to them on a silver platter in a PR's press pack, the stories didn't happen. He wondered if he might start collecting such a file on Moriarty, in preparation. Of course, Mycroft wouldn't want it to be published. The prat would insist on keeping things quiet.

That had led Sherlock to his second quote for the blog. " _There are only a few people in the world capable of planning a crime on this scale. Fortunately, there are also a few people who are capable of stopping them."_

A thrown gauntlet, it sounded like boasting, but it would underscore to Elizabeth Ffoukes that Sherlock's plan was going according to plan. She had been willing to accept the loss of one of the seventeen culprits in the St Albans hedge fund. Kasper Nielson was still at liberty, thanks to the last minute intervention of Lars Sigurson- a fact that drove home the point to Moriarty of just how useful his Norwegian operative was.

He'd been very careful to keep this work from both John and Mycroft. While in the bathroom to clean off the last traces of the dead kidnapper's blood, with the shower running he had texted the Irishman using his burn phone with the Norwegian sim card, in the guise of Lars Sigurson. He'd routed it through a half dozen black IP service providers- enough to keep Mycroft's minions guessing, if they were checking on all unknown calls from the local mast. That reminded him to push the point to Elizabeth- she'd have to get Mycroft to back down on all surveillance of the flat over the next couple of months.

The almost instant text reply made him smile.

**05.04 It's gone tits up. Run your client into cover- and get him to pay for the privilege.**

After they watched the police press conference, John tried to get Sherlock interested in breakfast.

"Case over. Time to re-fuel."

"Not quite done." Sherlock was looking at a text he had just received. "It's from Mrs Warren; she wants us to join them at Chalcot Square for a press briefing." He reached for his coat.

"And you're going to  _accept_?" John's eyebrows climbed in surprise. "Why?"

"At the moment, all publicity is good publicity, John. More cases will find their way to us, around the little obstacles that Mycroft keeps trying to raise."

"But you  _hate_  the press; you think they're idiots- your quote on the blog was positively insulting. Don't you think they might get a little…I don't know,  _hostile_  in their reaction to you?"

He was shrugging on his coat and grabbed the scarf. "Credit will be given where credit is due, John. This is a good news story for once, one that everyone will be vying to cover; might as well take advantage of it for a bit of free publicity."

oOo

A flurry of camera flashes went off, as Nathaniel Warren came out of the Georgian house. The tired but smiling man stood on the steps for a moment, then waved briefly, before setting his arms around his wife, Ariadne. His son, Nate was standing close beside them. Clapping broke out in the crowd that filled the street outside in Chalcot Square. The protesters had gone home, to be replaced by a smaller group of friends and colleagues of the banker, who added their applause.

"Back together with my family after my terrifying ordeal; and we have one person to thank for my deliverance – Sherlock Holmes."

The cameras swung to the pair standing off to the side. Sherlock did not conceal his slight discomfort at the attention, as the young boy handed over a small wrapped box to Sherlock. The consulting detective took it and rattled it.

"Tie pin. I don't wear ties."

"Shh." It was said quietly, but both of their comments were picked up on the television crews' microphones. The doctor gave what he hoped would be a grateful smile to the boy and the journalists.

Across town in Holland Park, now back in the serviced flat he had taken on a three month lease, Jim started laughing. "Remind me, Seb, to wear a tie pin for my court appearance."


End file.
